were rowing alone.
It was quite evening now on the lake, and there were great shadows from
the mountains lying across the water. Somehow the children felt much
quieter now than when they started in the afternoon. Milly had curled
herself up inside mother's arm, and was thinking a great deal about King
Arthur and the fairy ship, while Olly was quite taken up with watching
the oars as they dipped in and out of the water, and occasionally asking
his father when he should be big enough to row quite by himself. It
seemed a very little time after all before they were stepping out of the
boat at Aunt Emma's boathouse, and the picnic and the row were both
over.

"Good-bye, dear lake," said Milly, turning with her hands full of
water-lilies to look back before they went up to the house. "Good-night,
mountains; good-night, Birdsnest Point. I shall soon come and see you
again."

A few minutes more, and they were safely packed into a carriage which
drove them back to Ravensnest, and Aunt Emma was saying good-bye to
them.

"Next time, I shall come and see you, Milly," she said, as she kissed
Milly's little sleepy face. "Don't forget me till then."

"Then you'll tell us about old Mother Quiverquake," said Olly, hugging
her with his small arms. "Aunt Emma, I haven't given Johnny back his
stockings. They did tickle me so in the boat."

"We'll get them some time," said Aunt Emma. "Good-night, good-night."

It was a sleepy pair of children that nurse lifted out of the carriage
at Ravensnest. And though they tried to tell her something about it, she
had to wait till next morning before she could really understand
anything about their wonderful day at Aunt Emma's house.

CHAPTER VI

WET DAYS AT RAVENSNEST

For about a week after the row on the lake the weather was lovely, and
Milly wondered more than ever what the old gentleman who warned them of
the rain in the mountains could have been thinking about. She and Olly
were out all day, and nearly every afternoon nurse lifted the tea-table
through the low nursery window on to the lawn, and let them have their
tea out of doors among the flowers and trees and twittering birds. They
had found out a fly-catcher's nest in the ivy above the front door, and
every evening the two children used to fetch out their father to watch
the parent birds catching flies and carrying them to the hungry little
ones, whom they could just hear chirping up above the ivy. Olly was wild
to get the