amily who
happened to be straying about, showed her a row of pictures in the
dining-room, and escorted her through the gap at the bottom of the
garden into the fields at the back of the barn.

Sitting on the farther gate, whittling a stick, was a boy of seventeen,
with the unmistakable Castleton features and sunlit hair.

"Hallo, Morland!" cried Claudia. "We're going to get chestnuts. Do come
and help; there's a sport! This is Lorraine Forrester."

Morland would no doubt have performed the orthodox ceremony of lifting
his cap, but, being bareheaded, he grinned and shook hands instead.

"Don't advise you to eat them--they're beastly!" he vouchsafed.

"We're not going to--they're for the soldiers!"

"Then I pity the poor beggars, that's all."

"They're not to be eaten, they're to be made into gas-masks. I told you
all about it, Morland," declared Claudia.

"I've a shocking memory," he demurred. "But whatever they're for I'll
help you get some. Here, give me this to carry," and he took Lorraine's
basket and hung it over his arm.

There were plenty of chestnuts lying on the ground under the trees, and
more hanging on the branches which could be dislodged by a well-aimed
stone. The young people spent a profitable half-hour, and filled their
handkerchiefs as well as their baskets.

"I shall have heaps now!" exulted Lorraine. "You two are trumps to have
helped me!"

"I'd nothing else to do," said Morland.

"Wouldn't Violet let you practise?" asked Claudia quickly.

"No, she said it woke up Perugia!"

Claudia shrugged her shoulders eloquently.

"It's always the way!" she replied.

"Are you fond of music?" asked Lorraine.

"Love it! It's the only thing I _do_ care about. I'd play all day and
night if Violet didn't turn me out. She locks the piano sometimes."

"Is she your sister?"

Morland and Claudia both laughed and looked at each other, and the
latter explained:

"No, she's our stepmother, but she's so young that all of us call her
Violet. She's not such a bad sort on the whole, but we have squalls
sometimes, don't we, Morland?"

"Rather!" nodded the boy.

"Constable and Lilith used to sleep through anything and everything,"
added Claudia, "but Perugia's a fidgety child, and she wakes up and
yells when she hears the piano."

"I play the violin a little," admitted Lorraine modestly. "I wonder if
you two would come down some day and try a few things over with me. I've
nobody to play my accompanimen