rld's not such a bad place, after all."

"Not while you're in it!" said Gwen, kissing the dear, plain face that
was so like her own.

CHAPTER VII

Dick Chambers

Since the afternoon when Gwen had stopped behind in Stedburgh to
arrange about the broken china, and had been obliged to walk home, she
had seen nothing more of Dick Chambers. She looked out for him every
morning on the bus, but he was not there, and she was just wondering
what had become of him when he turned up in the most unexpected
quarter. It was the Saturday morning after the prize-giving. Saturday
was a whole holiday, and therefore a blissful day, every moment of
which was appreciated. Gwen was returning about ten o'clock from an
errand she had been sent to do in the village, and as she opened the
Parsonage gate she saw in the middle of the front walk a boyish figure
that looked familiar.

"Hello! What are you doing here?" she exclaimed.

"Come on business of a rather particular character," grinned Dick.
"Didn't you know your Father's coaching me?"

"He never said so!"

"He is, though. I'm to come three days a week, from nine to ten, and
I've just made a start this morning. I say, he's a ripping chap!"

"I agree with you there," remarked Gwen. "But why aren't you going to
school?"

"Thereby hangs a tale! I happened to do an idiotic thing one
afternoon--fainted in the lab, and had to be picked up in the midst of
fragments of glass that I'd smashed to smithereens. Then Dad got some
wretched specialist to come down and see me, and the fellow said I
must stop school for this term at any rate."

"Oh, I'm so sorry! Do you feel ill?"

"No. I'm all right--but it's rather rotten, for I'm knocked off
'footer'."

"How sickening for you! I know how wild I should be if I mightn't play
hockey. What may you do?"

"Only just loaf about--not even golf."

"May you go walks?"

"Oh, yes! but it's rather slow mooning about on the moors by oneself."

"Have you been to see Stack Head, where the sea-birds build? Or the
chasms? Oh! you ought to go there! I'll show you the way if you like!"

"I wish you would!"

"There'd be heaps of time this morning--that's to say if I may go,"
added Gwen, suddenly recollecting that she had promised Beatrice on
her honour not to go anywhere without leave. "Oh, here's Dad, so I can
ask him."

"Yes, by all means take Dick to Stack Head, the walk will do him
good," replied Mr. Gascoyne. "Be careful, and don't scr