the latter found so trying
to encounter with equanimity. "Sorry, but I haven't the time. I daresay
one of the kids would give you a game, though, some time."

"As if," she said afterwards, detailing this conversation with much
laughter to one of her brothers, "tennis could be taught in a day, or as
though I were going to bother to teach her either. And I fancied I saw
myself playing with a girl who had never held a racquet in her hand
before."

"By the way," Maud went on, "I don't suppose you have much idea at
present what our family consists of, have you?"

"No, I have not," said Margaret, feeling that she was quite safe in
making that admission, for Eleanor had not known either.

"Well, there's mother, of course, to start with, and then, of the ones
who are at home, there's Geoffrey; he's a year older than me, and he's at
Sandhurst. Like me, he's fearfully keen on games, and like me too, he's
pretty good," added Maud, who, as Margaret had discovered by that time,
was not lacking in a good opinion of herself. "Then I come, then
Hilary--she's a year younger than me. Then come Jack and Noel--they're
fifteen and sixteen respectively, and one's at Osborne and one's at
Dartmouth; all they seem to care about at present is sailing and
fishing, and so we don't see much of them. Then there's Edward, he's
about fourteen, I think; he's mad keen on cricket--besides, he's got all
the brains of the family. Then two cousins of ours, Nancy and Joan Green,
are staying with us. They're not half bad girls, and Nancy would play
quite a decent game of tennis if she wasn't so lazy. She can hit jolly
hard, but she won't run, and she will talk, so I won't play with her.
Then there are the kids--your little lot, you know--and I wish you joy of
them; they're a jolly handful, and no mistake."

Margaret, who had been listening eagerly to this account of the family in
the midst of which she was to live for the next few weeks, puckered her
forehead over the last sentences.

"The--the kids," she queried in a puzzled tone.

"Yes, the infants; my eldest sister Joanna's children. You are going
to take them over and teach them, aren't you? At least, that is what
I believe mother gave me to understand."

"Oh yes, of course," Margaret said, so quickly that Maud had no suspicion
that she had never in all her life before heard children called kids.

"Yes, mother hopes great things from you," Maud chattered on. "She says
as you have been in a schoo