e place broken up by a civil war.

Not far from the station stand the hotels and the more modest
boarding-houses.

And then begin the cottages and villas--nearly all of them
weatherboard--of people who like to have a foothold a few thousand feet
in the air when summer's shroud of damp enwraps the Harbour city.

The Lomax children swung disconsolately on the gate of their summer
home. All they could see was the road in front of them, now clear, now
filled with flying mist, and their senses were wearied of it.

Might they go down the gully?

No, they might not go down the gully. Who had time on a busy day like
this, and Miss Bibby writing to New Zealand, to go trapesing down all
those rough places with them?

Couldn't they go alone?

No, they could not go alone. A nice thing it would be for the Judge's
children to be lost down a gully and sleeping out all night.

Well, might they go down to the waterfall? They couldn't get lost on
made paths and with picnickers everywhere.

No, they might not go down to the waterfall. What would the Judge say if
he heard his children had been down a dangerous place like that and no
one with them!

"Well, let us go up to the shops and the station. We've got twopence
between us, and we want to spend it, and besides----" But Pauline broke
off, recognizing it was worse than useless to explain to a person like
Anna the pleasure they could obtain from watching to see whether Howie
or their own Larkin got most of the customers by the excursion train.
But Anna was horrified at the idea.

"In those dusty clothes and with your sandals off! A nice condition for
the shopkeepers to see a Judge's children in!"

"Oh, hang a Judge's children," muttered Pauline, but not until Anna had
returned to the house.

"Wish daddy was a butcher," said Muffie.

"Not a butcher," said Lynn, who was sensitive and never could pass the
shop of hanging carcases without a shudder,--"but a baker would be
_very_ nice, and make drop cakes seven for sixpence. Oh, I _could_ eat
a drop cake,--couldn't you?"

"A Benson's one," said Pauline dreamily; "they're the sweetest."

"But there are more currants in Dunks's," said Muffie. "I shall spend my
penny there."

"You won't," said Lynn, who was subject to fits of pessimism, "you'll
never spend it. Anna will never have finished washing up. Miss Bibby
will never have finished writing to mamma. We'll never get up to the
shops. We'll have to stop shut up here _for e