walk bare-foot by day and to sleep in a kind of wigwam at night, which
they erected out of alpenstocks and mackintoshes.

"It's too disgusting!" said Ruth dolefully. "Just when Edna and I had
been looking forward all the term to the boys coming home, and making so
many plans of what we would do and the fun we would have, some wretched
person sent father a copy of _The Educational Times_, with a long
account of this horrid walking-tour, and he said it was the exact thing
for Clifford and Keith, and insisted upon arranging it at once. I think
mother was really dreadfully disappointed. I believe she wanted to have
them home as much as we did, because she said they ought to go to the
dentist's, and she must look over their clothes, and she should like to
give them some phosphates tonic; but father said they could have their
teeth attended to at Geneva, and she could send the tonic to the
professor, and ask him to see that they took it. I know the boys will be
furious; they hate taking medicine: they generally keep it in their
mouths, and spit it out afterwards. They'll have to talk German all day
long too, and they can't bear that. You've no idea how they detest
languages. I had a picture post-card from Clifford yesterday, and he
said his feet were horribly sore with walking bare-foot, and his tent
blew away one night, and he was obliged to sleep in the open air."

No greater contrast could be found to the Barringtons than the Chester
children. Charlie, the elder, a lively young pickle of twelve, was on
terms of great intimacy with all the fishermen and sailor boys whose
acquaintance he could cultivate, talking in a learned manner of
main-sheets, fore-stays, jibs, gaffs, booms and bowsprits, and using
every nautical term he could manage to pick up. He had a very good idea
of rowing, and would often persuade the men to let him go out with them
in their boats, taking his turn at an oar, much to their amusement, and
setting log lines with the serious air of a practised hand. His jolly,
friendly ways won him general favour, and he was allowed to make himself
at home on many of the little fishing smacks, learning to hoist sails,
to steer, and to cast nets, though sometimes a too inquiring mind led
him to interfere on his own account in the navigation, with the result
that he would be unceremoniously bundled back to shore again, with a
warning to "keep out of this" in the future.

He was the envy of his eight-year-old sister Hi