on anything, and line
after line, as Penelope read, fell on deaf ears. "I think I shall go home
now," she said at last. "Penelope, do you think we shall have some new
clothes before we go away? We ought, we are dreadfully shabby."

Penelope looked up with doubt in her face. "I don't know. I don't expect
so; you see it would cost such a lot to get things for the four of us, and
there will be the tickets too, and it must be a very long journey."

Esther sighed. "Well, we are disgracefully shabby. I don't know what we
are going to do. Cousin Charlotte will think we are a tramp's children."

The next day, when the study hour came, Esther took a large basket of
stockings out into the woods with her to darn. "I must try and mend these
again," she said. "We don't seem to be going to have any new ones," and
while Penelope with some trouble made her way through a chapter of the
_Invasion of the Crimea_, and the younger ones collected fir-cones to take
home for the kitchen fire, Esther sorted out and darned a motley
collection of stockings of various sizes and every variety of shade of
washed-out black and brown. She darned them quickly and thoroughly; but
the great excrescences of blue, brown, grey, or black darning-wool would
have brought terror to the heart of any one who suffered from tender feet.
"There," she said, laying aside the last pair with a sigh, "at any rate we
shall be sound if we are shabby. I wish, though, the darns didn't show
quite so much," gazing regretfully at a large light-blue patch in the
middle of one of Poppy's black stockings.

After that the _Crimea_ was abandoned, and they all fell to talking of the
strange new life which was drawing so close to them now, and by degrees,
and in spite of their first dread, was so exciting, so full of interest,
and all manner of possibilities.

CHAPTER III.

And now at last the parting was over, and the new life fairly begun.
Esther, Penelope, Angela, and Poppy sat alone in a third-class carriage,
looking out with blurred and smarting eyes at the fields and hedges
rushing past them, at telegraph wires bowing and rising, at people and
cattle and houses, and wondered if it could all be real or if they were
only dreaming.

They had been very sad for the last few days, for the parting had been a
painful wrench. In spite of all its drawbacks, the little house at
Framley was their home, and they shed many bitter tears when they bade
good-bye to it,