ee-ee," shouted Pauline instantly in return. Then looked a little
troubled, for cooee was to be interpreted that all was well.

"At all events it's not our fault," she said resignedly.

A stout figure of vengeance was indeed coming along the path in the
shape of Uncle Hugh.

Tiny Nellie Gowan who could never keep a secret ten minutes had suddenly
revealed the horrifying fact that "Effie and Florence were going to run
and run till they catched the whooping cough and all could go to
Muffie's house again."

So Hugh had followed in their wake promptly enough, but then he was
stout, while they were slim, and the race was consequently not to him.

He drove Paul and Lynn downwards with threats of dry bread and spring
water for lunch. And he bore his nieces, who cheerfully exculpated their
friends from blame, back to the tables at the foot of the first Fall,
where Kate and the others were beginning to spread the lunch.

And here nothing in the shape of wrath and reproaches and argument could
shake them from the position behind which they had entrenched
themselves, namely that since the coughing would have to be done by
themselves it mattered nothing to anybody if the affliction came upon
them.

Kate unpacked the baskets with a melancholy air. It was useless, of
course, to preserve an appearance of anger towards the offenders, but a
bad quarter of an hour was undoubtedly in store for her with their
mother.

Hugh was optimistic. He declared that the whooping cough microbe meeting
the fresh air microbe on such a fighting ground as a mountain gully
would be "laid out in one act."

He stretched himself along a seat and indulged in a smoke after his
exertions, while Kate and Florence and Effie made all ready for lunch.

Dora and Beatrice had gone to sit in the "Lovers' Nook" and try to feel
romantic. Kate had rejected their offers of assistance in her work.

"Why did you send away my little girls?" said Hugh lazily,--"I don't
mean bad little girls like those," he looked at the shamelessly cheerful
Florence and Effie, who were gathering ferns for the tables, "but my
good little girls."

"Silly little things," said Kate, "they get on my nerves frightfully. I
wanted to keep my faculties clear for my work."

"Ah," said Hugh, looking at his pipe, "they strike you that way, do
they, K? They seem rather charming to me to-day. Perhaps apart--one
cannot have both unfortunately--perhaps one at a time, K, they might
seem to have