m sure they are very good children--wonderfully good, Anna," said
Miss Bibby.

"Oh yes, they're good enough," said Anna, "but so uncommon lively. And
talk! They keeps it up, one after the other, and sometimes all four at a
time, till your head spins round like a top. I got quite giddy goin'
down to the waterfall with them yesterday, and it wasn't the steps,
neither, it was just their tongues going at it, clackerty-clack all the
time. What time will you be back, Miss Bibby?"

"Oh," said Miss Bibby, "I should not think of going _away_ for my
holiday, Anna. Mrs. Lomax knows nothing would make me leave the children
so long, while she is so far away. But since she begged me to take a day
a week to myself, I am going to shut myself in my room to-day. I have
very important work."

"Working him a pair of slippers, I'll undertake," ran Anna's thoughts.
But aloud she said, "Yes, you do, Miss Bibby. I'll keep them youngsters
away from you; you get a good rest while you're about it."

The heartiness in her tone was due to the fact that she was about to ask
for an extra special holiday for herself in a day or two to attend the
Mountain Bakers' picnic at a distant waterfall.

So Miss Bibby disappeared into her room for the day, after having
written down the children's meals in her painstaking fashion on the
kitchen slate, and given the tradesmen's orders, and seen the children
happily engaged in their favourite game of Swiss Family Robinson.

Anna sighed with relief; gentle as Miss Bibby was she had a way of
keeping people up to the mark, and on a warm day like this, a
well-executed policy of "letting things slip" appealed to the
imagination.

Miss Bibby came back a moment.

"Anna," she said, "I have neglected to give Master Max and Miss Lynn
their medicine, will you call them in and give it to them? I do not want
to waste time."

Anna undertook the commission.

"Don't know what I'm thinking of; I forgot my own doses," she muttered
as she went to the dining-room for the bottles. Max had been ordered a
pleasant preparation of malt to fortify his little system during his
convalescence, and Lynn an iron tonic. The other two were making such
excellent recoveries nothing was needed.

Anna reached the two bottles from the cupboard, measured out with a
steady hand a tablespoon of the malt, and swallowed it, then followed it
by a teaspoonful of Lynn's iron. She looked at herself in the sideboard
mirror as she did so. "I don't t