as very hot. The dolls, from the featureless midshipman to the
colossal professional beauty sitting in her own costly perambulator (a
present from Mrs. Pratt), felt the heat, and showed it by their moist
countenances. The only person who was cool was a small, nude, china
infant in its zinc bath, the property of Stella, whose determination to
reach central facts, and to penetrate to the root of the matter, at
present took the form of tearing or licking off all that could be torn
or licked from objects of interest. Hester, who had presented her with
the floating baby in the bath, sometimes wondered, as she watched Stella
conscientiously work through a well-dressed doll down to its stitched
sawdust compartments, what Mr. Gresley would make of his daughter when
she turned her attention to theology.

They were all sitting in a tight circle round the handkerchief, Regie
watching Hester cutting a new supply of plates out of smooth leaves with
her little gilt scissors, while Mary and Stella tried alternately to
suck an inaccessible grain of sugar out of the bottom of an acorn cup.

Rachel and Dick had come up on their silent wheels, and were looking at
them over the wall before Hester was aware of their presence.

"May we join the tea-party?" asked Rachel, and Hester started
violently.

"I am afraid the gate is locked," she said. "But perhaps you can climb
it."

"We can't leave the bicycles outside, though," said Dick, and he took a
good look at the heavy padlocked gate. Then he slowly lifted it off its
hinges, wheeled in the bicycles, and replaced the gate in position.

Rachel looked at him.

"Do you always do what you want to do?" she said, involuntarily.

"It saves trouble," he said, "especially as no one can be such a
first-class fool as to think a padlock will keep a gate shut. He would
expect it to be opened."

"But father said no one could come in there now," explained Regie, who
had watched, open-mouthed, the upheaval of the gate. "Father said it
could not be opened any more. He told mother."

"Did he, my son?" said Dick, and he kissed every one, beginning with
Hester and finishing with the dolls. Then they all sat down to the
tea-party, and partook largely of the delicacies, and after tea Dick
solemnly asked the children if they had seen the flying half-penny he
had brought back with him from Australia. The children crowded round
him, and the half-penny was produced and handed round. Each child
touched it,