of the Little Black Girl began to
happen.

The children were sitting on a seat in St James's Park. They had been
watching the pelican repulsing with careful dignity the advances of the
seagulls who are always so anxious to play games with it. The pelican
thinks, very properly, that it hasn't the figure for games, so it spends
most of its time pretending that that is not the reason why it won't
play.

The breathlessness caused by Atlantis was wearing off a little. Cyril,
who always wanted to understand all about everything, was turning things
over in his mind.

'I'm not; I'm only thinking,' he answered when Robert asked him what he
was so grumpy about. 'I'll tell you when I've thought it all out.'

'If it's about the Amulet I don't want to hear it,' said Jane.

'Nobody asked you to,' retorted Cyril mildly, 'and I haven't finished my
inside thinking about it yet. Let's go to Kew in the meantime.'

'I'd rather go in a steamer,' said Robert; and the girls laughed.

'That's right,' said Cyril, 'BE funny. I would.'

'Well, he was, rather,' said Anthea.

'I wouldn't think, Squirrel, if it hurts you so,' said Robert kindly.

'Oh, shut up,' said Cyril, 'or else talk about Kew.'

'I want to see the palms there,' said Anthea hastily, 'to see if they're
anything like the ones on the island where we united the Cook and the
Burglar by the Reverend Half-Curate.'

All disagreeableness was swept away in a pleasant tide of recollections,
and 'Do you remember...?' they said. 'Have you forgotten...?'

'My hat!' remarked Cyril pensively, as the flood of reminiscence ebbed a
little; 'we have had some times.'

'We have that,' said Robert.

'Don't let's have any more,' said Jane anxiously.

'That's what I was thinking about,' Cyril replied; and just then they
heard the Little Black Girl sniff. She was quite close to them.

She was not really a little black girl. She was shabby and not very
clean, and she had been crying so much that you could hardly see,
through the narrow chink between her swollen lids, how very blue her
eyes were. It was her dress that was black, and it was too big and too
long for her, and she wore a speckled black-ribboned sailor hat that
would have fitted a much bigger head than her little flaxen one. And she
stood looking at the children and sniffing.

'Oh, dear!' said Anthea, jumping up. 'Whatever is the matter?'

She put her hand on the little girl's arm. It was rudely shaken off.

'You leave me