League," which held that two meals a day were
amply sufficient for the requirements of any rational human being, they
had limited their family repasts to luncheon and supper, at which only
vegetarian dishes were permitted to appear; and the poor children,
hungry with sea air and with running about on the sands, who would have
enjoyed an unstinted supply of butcher's meat and bread and butter, were
carefully dieted on plasmon, prepared nuts, and many patent foods, which
their mother measured out in exact portions, keeping a careful record in
her diary of the amount they were allowed to consume, and taking the
pair to be weighed every week upon the automatic machine at the railway
station. Their costumes consisted of plain blue over-all pinafores and
sandals, and they wore neither hats nor stockings.

"It's all right for the seaside," grumbled Ruth to her intimate friends,
"because we can go into the water without minding getting into a mess;
but we have to wear exactly the same in town, and it's horrible. You
can't think how every one stares at as, just as if we were a show.
Sometimes ladies stop us, and ask our governess if we've lost our hats,
and hadn't she better tie our handkerchiefs over our heads? We shouldn't
dare to go out alone even if we were allowed, we look so queer. We went
once to the post by ourselves, and some rude boys chased us all the way,
calling out 'Bare-legs!' It's dreadfully cold in winter, too, without
stockings, and when it rains our heads get wet through, and we have to
be dried with towels when we come in again. I wonder why we can't be
dressed like other people. I wish I had Belle Stuart's clothes; they're
perfectly lovely!"

Ruth's rather pathetic little face always bore the injured expression of
one who cherishes a grievance. She was a thin, pale child, who did not
look as though she flourished upon her peculiar system of bringing up,
which seemed to have the unfortunate effect of completely spoiling her
temper, and making her see life through an extremely blue pair of
spectacles. This summer she certainly thought she had a just cause of
complaint, since her two schoolboy brothers, instead of spending their
holidays as usual at the seaside, had been dispatched on a walking-tour
to Switzerland with a certain German professor, who, in accordance with
the latest educational fad, was conducting a select little party of boys
on an open-air pilgrimage, the main features of which seemed to be to