w, and wished we'd never come to
Silversands. I think a wet day in lodgings is just about the horridest
thing in the world, and I simply can't imagine how you can have enjoyed
it."

CHAPTER XV.

TEA WITH MR. BINKS.

"At many a statelier home we've had good cheer,
But ne'er a kinder welcome found than here."

The tea-cosy, when finished, was a thing of beauty, and Isobel packed it
up in sheets of white tissue paper with much pride and satisfaction.
Both the steaming teapot on the one side and the ecclesiastical-looking
"B" on the other had given her a great deal of trouble, and she was not
sorry that they were completed.

"Going to have tea with that vulgar old man we met in the train!"
exclaimed Belle, raising her eyebrows in astonishment when Isobel told
her of their plans. "You really do the _funniest_ things! I thought him
dreadful. I suppose, since he asked you, you couldn't get out of it, but
I'm sorry for you to have to go. I shouldn't have been able to come to
the island in any case to-morrow, because mother wants to take me to see
the Oppenheims."

"Who are they?" asked Isobel.

"Oh, they're a family mother knows in London. They're ever so rich.
They've taken a lovely furnished house near the woods, with a
tennis-court and a huge garden. They're to arrive this evening, and
they're bringing their motor car and their chauffeur with them. The
Wilsons and the Bardsleys are coming by the same train. Blanche
Oppenheim is six months older than I am, and mother says she's sure I
shall like her. It will be nice to have some more friends here;
Silversands is getting rather dull. There's so little to do in such a
quiet place. There never seems to be anything going on."

Isobel thought there had been a great deal going on of the kind of fun
she enjoyed, though it might not be altogether to Belle's taste, and
even her friend's depreciation of poor Mr. Binks could not spoil the
pleasure with which she anticipated her visit to the White Coppice. She
was full of eagerness to start on Thursday afternoon, and was ready
fully half an hour too soon, though her mother assured her they could
not with decency arrive before four o'clock.

The White Coppice lay opposite to Silversands, at the other side of a
narrow peninsula, and you could either reach it by going five miles
round by the road, or by walking two miles across the hills. Mrs.
Stewart and Isobel naturally preferred the short cut, and leaving the