As this book partly concerns the doings of the group of girls who came daily from Chagmouth to Durracombe, we will follow them as they motored back on their ten miles' journey from school. Squashed together in 'the sardine-tin,' as they irreverently nicknamed the highly respectable car driven by Mr. Vicary, who owned the garage close to the mill, they held high jinks and talked at least thirteen to the dozen. There was so much to discuss. The school was new to all of them, and naturally they wished to criticise its methods, its teachers, its girls, and its prospects of fun during the ensuing term.

"I like Miss Mitchell!"

"Yes, she's jolly, though I fancy she could be stern."

"Oh, I shouldn't like to face her in the study, of course."

"Miss Fanny is a dear!"

"And so is Miss Pollard."

"What d'you think of the monitresses?"

"Merle is A1!"

"Yes, I'm taken with Mavis and Merle! Partly because they seem to belong to Chagmouth. They come over nearly every Saturday with Dr. Tremayne."

"Good! Then we shall see something of them. Hello! What's this car trying to pass us? Babbie Williams! I'd forgotten for the moment she lives at Chagmouth too."

It was Babbie, driving in solitary state, who flew by in the big motor, which turned up the side road that led to The Warren. She gave a friendly nod as she passed, and the six 'sardines' smiled in return.

"It's a case of 'we are seven' from Chagmouth," commented Fay. "If we include Mavis and Merle that would make nine. I guess we'll get up a set of nature study rambles on Saturday afternoons and all go out together. We'd have some real frolics!"

"Rather! I'm your girl! Romola and I are ready for any fun that's going. That's to say if there's going to be time for any fun. But with all the pile of lessons Miss Mitchell has given us we shall be busy, with our noses at the grindstone. It always takes both of us hours to do our prep!"

The car meanwhile, with Mr. Vicary at the driving-wheel, had run across the moor and down the steep hill, and was jolting over the cobble-stones of the narrow main street of Chagmouth. It stopped outside the Post Office, for the principal reason that if it went any farther it would be impossible for it to turn round, and the girls, dismounting, took their satchels or piles of books, said good-bye to one another, and scattered to their respective homes. Beata and Romola crossed the bridge that spanned the brook, skirted the harbour, climbed a flight of steps cut in the solid rock, and reached a house which stood on the top of a high crag overlooking the sea. It was an ideal spot for an artist to live, and it was chiefly for its glorious view that Mr. Castleton had chosen it. He was intensely sensitive to his surroundings, and preferred a picturesque cottage, however inconvenient, to the comforts of an unaesthetic, bow- windowed, modern, red-brick, suburban residence.

"Romance before everything!" he declared. "It's impossible to paint unless you're in the right atmosphere. English scenery is getting spoilt and vulgarised to such a degree that there'll soon be none of it left to sketch. Where are the beautiful villages of thirty years ago? Gone—most of them! The thatched roofs replaced by corrugated iron, and the hedges clipped close to please the motorists. I defy anybody to make a successful picture out of a clipped hedge! Even the gnarled apple trees are being cut down and replaced by market gardeners' 'choice saplings.' Picturesque England will soon be a thing of the past! I consider Chagmouth one of the last strongholds for an artist, and I'm going to live here as long as it remains unspoilt. There's enough work to keep me busy for several years at any rate."

It is part of an artist's business to move about from place to place in quest of fresh subjects. Mr. Castleton had spent some years at Porthkeverne, and having, from a professional point of view, exhausted that neighbourhood, he had transferred himself and his family to a new horizon. He had a genius for discovering his right niche, and he had been fortunate enough to light upon exactly the place that appealed to him. It would not have suited everybody. It was a long low house, made of three fishermen's cottages thrown into one, built so close to the edge of the cliff that it seemed like a sea-bird's nest, with windows overlooking the channel and the harbour, and a strip of stony garden behind. Inside, the accommodation was somewhat cramped, but the rooms, if small, were quaint, with an old-fashioned air about the panelled parlour and raftered dining- room that suggested bygone days of smugglers and privateers. Below, in a nook of the cliff, stood an old sail-shed, which Mr. Castleton had turned into his studio. The big new skylight had only just been fitted into the roof, and the stove which was to heat it during the winter was still at Durracombe station waiting for the carrier to fetch it, but canvases were already hung round the walls, the throne was erected and the big easel placed in position, and an old fisherman, with weather-beaten countenance and picturesque stained jersey, sat every morning for his portrait.

Those of our readers who have met the Castletons before in The Head Girl at the Gables, will remember that they were a very large family. Morland, the eldest, had been at the war, had won the D.C.M., and was now learning engineering; Claudia was studying singing in London; Madox had been sent for his first term at boarding-school; and the four little ones, Constable, Lilith, Perugia, and Gabriel, were still in the nursery. There was only one gap. Landry, poor Landry, who had never been like other boys, had passed over the divide and joined the beautiful mother whom in features he had so strongly resembled. A painting of him, as a little child in her arms, hung on the studio wall. In some respects it was the most brilliant portrait which Mr. Castleton had ever achieved. He always showed it to visitors as a specimen of his best work.

At the time this story begins, Beata and Romola were fourteen and thirteen years of age. They thoroughly maintained the family reputation for good looks. There was a certain resemblance between them, and yet a difference. Beata's eyes were clear grey, with dark lines round the iris, and her hair was the exact shade of one of her father's best English gold picture frames. She was a clever, capable girl, with a great love for music, and was beginning to play the violin rather well. She got on quite tolerably with her stepmother, and was fond of the little half-brothers and sisters, though the warmest corner of her heart was reserved for Madox, who was the baby of the elder portion of the family.

Romola, blue-eyed and ethereal, with long amber hair like a Saxon princess, was her father's favourite model whenever he wished to depict scenes of olden times. She figured as 'Guinevere' in a series of illustrations to the Morte d'Arthur, as 'Elaine' her portrait had been exhibited in the Academy, as 'The Lady of Shalott' she had appeared in a coloured frontispiece of The Art Review, she inspired a most successful poster of 'Cinderella,' and was the original of a series of fairy drawings in a children's annual. She was not so clever or go-ahead as Beata, and was rather dreamy and romantic in temperament, with a gift towards painting and poetry, and a disinclination to do anything very definite. She left most of the problems of life to Beata, and seldom troubled to make decisions for herself. She was rather a pet with Violet, her young stepmother, who, while preferring her to her sister, found her the less useful of the two.

"You go, Beata, you're so quick!" Violet would say, when she wanted an errand done, and for the same reason gave the charge of the children to the one who was the more capable of assuming the responsibility.

It was not that Romola consciously shirked home duties, but she would any time rather pose for an hour on the throne in the studio than take temporary command of the nursery. Beata, on the contrary, hated sitting still, and considered there was no greater penance than to be commandeered by her father as a model. Her energetic temperament liked to find its expression in outdoor activities. She had set to work upon the neglected garden, and was busy trying to make flower-beds, and she looked forward keenly to the forthcoming hockey season at school. The daily drive to Durracombe and back was pure delight, and formed her greatest compensation for leaving Porthkeverne and The Gables.

The Haven, as the house occupied by the Castletons was called, had been changed into its present form by an old retired sea-captain, and there was much about it that suggested a nautical atmosphere. The panelled walls of the parlour might have been taken from a ship's cabin, the dining-room contained convenient lockers, there was a small observatory upstairs built to accommodate a big telescope, and the figure-head of a vessel adorned the garden. Young Mrs. Castleton, whose tastes inclined towards up-to-date comforts, often grumbled at its inconveniences, but on the whole the family liked it. They would not have exchanged it for a suburban villa for worlds. Just on the opposite side of the harbour, with the jetty and the broad strip of green water in between, was the furnished house rented at present by the Macleods. It stood in the more aristocratic portion of Chagmouth, apart from the town and the fishing, in company with one or two other newly-built residences. It was charmingly pretty and artistic, in a perfectly modern fashion, and had been designed by a famous architect. Its owner, a retired naval officer, had gone abroad for a year, and had let the place in his absence, rejoicing to have secured a careful tenant. He might certainly congratulate himself upon leaving his house in such good hands. Mr. Macleod was an American gentleman, who, owing to a nervous breakdown, was travelling in Europe, and happening in the course of the summer to wander to Chagmouth, he had fallen in love with the quaint old town and had decided to spend the winter there. The factor which largely influenced this decision was the presence of Mr. Castleton. Mr. Macleod was an enthusiastic amateur painter, and the prospect of being able to take lessons from so good an artist was sufficient to chain him to Chagmouth. His wife encouraged the idea.

"George is just miserable if he's nothing to do," she explained to her friends. "The doctor told me not to let him read too much or take up any special mental hobby, but sketching strikes the happy medium. He thoroughly enjoys pottering about in Mr. Castleton's studio, or making drawings down on the quay. It's not arduous work and yet it keeps him occupied. I like the house, and Fay can go to school near, so I expect we're fixed here until next spring at any rate. If I get too bored I shall run over to Paris and see my sister, but really I haven't been well lately myself, and it will do me good to take a thorough rest for a while."

Fay, who had formed an enthusiastic friendship with Beata and Romola, was as pleased with Chagmouth as her parents. From the windows of Bella Vista she could look across the harbour to The Haven, and had already arranged a code of signals by which she might communicate with her chums. She was a bright, amusing girl, rather grown-up for her age, and the constant companion of her father and mother.

"Fay runs the house!" Mrs. Macleod would declare sometimes; but she was immensely proud of her young daughter, and unwilling to thwart her in any of the projects which she might care to take up. These, indeed, were many. Fay dabbled in numerous hobbies, and her demands varied from photographic materials to special sandals for toe dancing. She thoroughly enjoyed life, and the freshness of her enthusiasm provided her parents with a perpetual interest. To those friends who urged boarding-school her mother was ready with the reply:

"Why must we be parted from her? She's her father's best tonic! She keeps him young and makes him laugh. She's getting her education and living her home life at the same time, and that seems to me ideal. We shall probably have to spare her later on to be married, so we may as well make the most of her now while we've got her. It's the chief tragedy of parents that the children grow up and go away. We'll enjoy our nest while we have our one chick here. When the young ones are fledged, the old birds stop singing."

[Illustration: MR. CASTLETON DID NOT LOOK AT ALL PLEASED]

Of the other girls who shared the car to Durracombe, Tattie Carew, whose parents were in India had come to live with her aunt Miss Grant, in the ivy-covered house at the top of the hill, while Nan and Lizzie Colville were the daughters of the newly-appointed vicar. All six, therefore, were fresh comers to the neighbourhood, and as yet had neither explored the whole of its beauties nor learnt to understand its traditions. In both of these respects Mavis and Merle, though non-residents, had the advantage of them. Their friendship with Bevis Talland, the boy who, once the village foundling, had turned out to be heir to the Chagmouth estate, had given them an intimate acquaintance with the life of the place. Bevis had shown them the haunts of the birds, and the best places for wild flowers, had told them the local legends and the histories of the various worthies of the parish. The little town indeed seemed strangely empty without him, but at present he was away at school, and later would be going to college, though eventually, when he came of age, he would probably take up his residence in the old family home. The Warren, where Tallands had lived for so many generations, had been let on a lease to Mr. Glyn Williams, and the lawyers who managed the property had decided that this arrangement should be continued during Bevis's minority; heavy death duties and land-taxes would cripple the estate for some years, and it was not worth while running a house for the sake of a schoolboy who could pass only his holidays there. Mr. Glyn Williams meanwhile had bought Bodoran Hall near Port Sennen, and would have leisure to make all the many structural alterations which he wished before he was obliged to leave The Warren. Through Bevis's foster-mother, Mrs. Penruddock of Grimbal's Farm, where Dr. Tremayne had his branch surgery at Chagmouth, Mavis and Merle were also kept very much in touch with the tone of the place and knew most of the little happenings that occurred. They were friendly with many of the village people, almost all of whom were their uncle's patients at one time or another, and the Saturday expedition over the moor from Durracombe was to them the central attraction of the whole week.

On the first Saturday afternoon of the new term, by special invitation, they called at The Haven, and made the acquaintance of at least a portion of the Castleton family. Beata was practising her violin, but she laid it aside at once.

"I'll finish my half-hour afterwards. It will do quite as well this evening. It's too fine a day to stay stuffing inside the house. Do you care to come into the garden? We can step out through this window. These are the babies, Constable, Lilith, Perugia, and Gabriel. I was keeping an eye on them while I practised, to see they weren't in any mischief. Violet has a headache and is lying down. She's our stepmother, you know. We don't let the little ones call her Violet though! Come here, Perugia, and shake hands! She's rather a pet, isn't she?"

The younger Castletons, from curly-headed Constable, known familiarly as 'Cooney,' to lovely three-year-old Baby Gabriel, were beautiful children, and looked particularly picturesque in holland play-overalls embroidered with saxe-blue. Mr. Castleton, who valued artistic effect before everything, found Constable one of his most useful models, and though the boy was now seven and a half, he was generally dressed in a Kate Greenaway smock and his crop of golden curls was still uncut.

"Don't touch him!" his father would protest, whenever the question of Constable's hair arose in the family; "as he is he's worth an income to me! He always gets into exhibitions and he generally sells. He's just what the average British patron wants to buy. The public can't always understand my allegorical pictures, but they know a pretty child when they see one. He'll be spoilt for the studio if he loses his curls, and I want to sketch him as a singing angel, and as a water-baby, and for some of my Hans Andersen illustrations. It's too bad to ruin his artistic value just when I've trained him to pose properly. It will be years before Gabriel learns to sit as still—if he ever does."

The little fellow had charmingly attractive manners, and came forward willingly to talk to visitors. He and Perugia were the talkative ones; Lilith, a flaxen-haired fairy of six, was very shy, and the baby was busy with his own affairs and refused to be interrupted.

"Romola is sitting for Father," explained Beata. "I expect he'd let her go now though, if you'd care to come for a walk with us. Bother! What shall I do with the little ones? I can't leave them to Violet when she's lying down."

"Bring them with you," suggested Mavis, who was making friends with
Perugia.

"Should you mind? I'll tell you what! I'll borrow the donkey from the farm, then they can ride in turns and won't get tired. Mrs. Donnithorne is very good-natured about lending it. Constable, you run and ask her, while we go to fetch Romola. Do you care to come to the studio?"

Mavis and Merle were only too delighted to have the opportunity of taking a peep into Mr. Castleton's den, so followed Beata to the old sail-room down a flight of steps cut in the cliff side. They remembered the place, for Job Helyar used to plait osiers there, and they had come once to buy a basket from him. In its former days it had been nothing but a rough shed. They hardly recognised it now it was turned into a studio. Beata went boldly in, and introduced her visitors. Her father was painting a study of Romola for incorporation in a large historical picture. She was standing on the throne, in a beautiful scarlet mediaeval costume, with her long fair hair unbound and flowing like an amber waterfall down her back. Mr. Castleton did not look at all pleased at being interrupted in his work, but he glanced at his watch and nodded a reluctant permission to Romola to relieve her pose. She came down from the platform, stretching her tired arms.

"I'm supposed to be holding up a casket, and it's a horrid position to keep," she explained. "May I go now, Dad? We want Mavis and Merle to take us for a walk. I shan't be three seconds changing out of this costume. You think the study is like me, Mavis? Show them the sketch for the picture, Dad! Now you see where my place will be in it—just there. The little page-boy is Constable, and Violet sat for the queen."

While Romola slipped off her mediaeval robe and plaited her long hair, Beata escorted the visitors back to the garden. She fetched a pair of field-glasses, took a survey through them, then declared:

"I can see Fay at her window, and Tattie sitting on the bank above her aunt's tennis-court. I'll signal to them both, and they'll meet us by the bridge. We'll call at the Vicarage and pick up Nan and Lizzie, then we shall be quite a jolly party. Oh, here's Constable with Billy. I'm so glad Mrs. Donnithorne will lend him to us. Are we all ready? Then come along!"

The six picturesque Castletons were already well known in the streets of Chagmouth, and many eyes were turned to look at them as they passed along, with Perugia and Gabriel riding the donkey together, Romola holding them both on, and Lilith leading Billy by the bridle. Kindly comments came from cottage doorways.

"Stick on tight, ma dear!"

"Don't 'ee walk behind or her'll kick!"

"Mind her don't run away with ee!"

"Don't they ride pretty, bless 'em!"

At the bridge by the harbour the party was reinforced by Fay and Tattie, and farther on they were joined by the Colvilles, so that they were twelve strong as they left the town, and a particularly merry crew. At the beginning of the first hill, however, the donkey stopped dead. Several hands seized its bridle and tried to urge it forward, while Mavis and Merle pushed it in the rear, but not all their efforts could induce it to stir an inch.

"Romola! What utter idiots we are!" exclaimed Beata. "Of course we've forgotten the peppermints!"

"Bother! So we have! We must go back for some, that's all!"

"The 'donk' won't go without peppermints! He simply loves them!" explained Beata tragically.

"We always take a big packet of them with us to give him. He expects them! He's turning his head round to look for them!"

"Bless his heart, he shall have them then!" cooed Merle, patting the dusty coat of their steed. "His auntie will go and get some for him herself if he'll wait like a good boy. Is he particular what kind he gets?"

"He likes those big brown humbugs!"

"Right-o! I'll run to Denham's shop and buy some. It's not far. Wait for me, won't you?"

"Wait!" echoed Beata. "There'll be no question of going on. Nothing but humbugs will make him move his four feet. We'll camp here till you come back."

Merle performed her errand quickly, returning with two packets of sweets, one for Billy and the other for the rest of the party. The donkey, after consuming several peppermints, condescended to move on, and the procession started once more. They had not gone far, however, before a mishap occurred: in lieu of saddle a cushion had been tied on to Billy's back, the strap had loosened, the cushion suddenly slipped, and Perugia and Gabriel descended into the road. Romola managed to break their fall, but they were both terrified, and refused to mount again, so Constable took a turn instead, holding the bridle himself, while Lilith, with all the Castleton instinct for artistic effect, gathered posies of wild flowers and wove them into a wreath for the donkey's neck.

The small people could not walk fast, and the steed stopped so often to demand refreshments, that the expedition was very leisurely and they did not proceed far. They had only reached the point above the lighthouse when Mavis, with an eye on her wrist watch, declared it was time to turn back.

"We'll go with you another time, when we haven't to trail all this crew along!" sighed Beata, as she bade good-bye to her friends. "Children are a nuisance if you want to get on quickly. I'd have left them in the garden if I could! Come and see us again at The Haven, won't you? I wish Claudia and Morland were at home and we'd have some music. Well, I shall see you next week, I suppose. I'm to have my first violin lesson on Monday. I don't know whether I'm glad or not. I expect I shall be terrified of Mr. Barlow. I learnt from a lady before. How I'm going to practise and do all the home lessons Miss Mitchell sets us I can't imagine! I think I shall strike like the 'donk' and refuse to stir unless they give me peppermints!"