left me twelve to maintain!"

All the girls began laughing again. Honoria did not laugh. She was
feeling in her pocket.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"Lizzie Pezzack. My father tends the lighthouse. Give me something
for my doll, miss!"

Honoria held out a half-crown piece.

"Hand it to me."

The child did not understand. "Give me something--" she began again
in her dull, level voice.

Honoria stamped her foot. "Give it to me!" She snatched up the doll
and thrust it into the fishing creel, tossed the coin into Lizzie's
basket, and taking Comedy by the bridle, moved up the path.

"She've adopted en!" They laughed and called out to Lizzie that she
was in luck's way. But Taffy saw the child's face as she stared into
the empty basket, and that it was perplexed and forlorn.

"Why did you do that?" he asked, as he caught up with Honoria.
She did not answer.

And now they turned away from the sea, and struck a high road which
took them between upland farms and across the ridge of cultivated
land to a valley full of trees. A narrow path led inland up this
valley. They had followed it under pale green shadows, in Indian
file, the pony at Honoria's heels and Taffy behind, and stepped out
into sunlight again upon a heathery moor where a trout stream
chattered and sparkled. And there by a granite bridge they found
George fishing, with three small trout shining on the turf beside
him.

This was a day which Taffy remembered all his life, and yet most
confusedly. Indeed there was little to remember it by--little to be
told except that all the while the stream talked, the larks sang, and
in the hollow of the hills three children were happy. George landed
half a dozen trout before lunch-time; but Taffy caught none, partly
because he knew nothing about fishing, partly because the chatter of
the stream set him telling tales to himself and he forgot the rod in
his hand. And Honoria, after hooking a tiny fish and throwing it
back into the water, wandered off in search of larks' nests.
She came slowly back when George blew a whistle announcing lunch.

"Hullo! What's this?" he asked, as he dived a hand into her creel.
"Ugh! a doll! I say, Taffy, let's float her down the river.
What humbug, Honoria!"

But she had snatched the doll and crammed it back roughly into the
creel. A minute later, when they were not looking, she lifted the
lid again and disposed the poor thing more gently.

"Why don't you talk,