to Cousin Charlotte's it would not seem so bad. But I don't seem able to get on very well. I can't quite make out what it is all about, and the words are very long. I thought I'd try though. I only wish I'd thought of it sooner."

Esther felt a twinge of shame. She had thought of it, but she had done nothing, and her inmost conscience told her she might have spent her time more profitably than she had. "If we were not going away, Pen," she said enthusiastically, "we would have lessons here every day. P'r'aps if we kept on at it we might get to understand better, and we might get some nice books in time. But," hopelessly, "it is too late now."

"Oh, I don't think so," said Penelope encouragingly. "It can never be too late to learn things, and p'r'aps we can make up for lost time. At any rate, let's try."

"Very well, we'll begin now. Shall we start together? What book are you reading?"

"It is called The Invasion of the Crimea" said Penelope slowly. "I think it will be very interesting—further on."

"I wonder what the Crimea was," mused Esther.

"If we read very carefully perhaps we shall find out. There seems to be a lot about soldiers and battles."

"I wonder," said Esther, after a moment's thought, "if it will be any good our reading all this. Don't you think we ought to learn something that people talk about every day?"

Penelope looked a little disappointed. "I don't know," she said slowly. "I don't know how to—or what books to get, and—and p'r'aps some people do talk about the Crimea. Cousin Charlotte may, and then won't she be surprised if we know all about it!"

"Is it long?" asked Esther, still dubiously. Esther wanted to find the royal road to knowledge, which is easy and short and smooth—so they say, but no one knows, for no one has found it yet.

"Eight more volumes," said Penelope, almost apologetically. She was beginning to feel her zest for self-education considerably damped. "But," brightening up a little, "we can go on with this, at any rate, until we find out what we ought to learn. It can't do any harm. It looks like history, and I am sure we ought to know history."

"Yes," agreed Esther. So they began taking it in turns to read; but the words were long, and the names difficult to pronounce, and Esther's mind was in such a state of turmoil she could not fix it on anything, and line after line, as Penelope read, fell on deaf ears. "I think I shall go home now," she said at last. "Penelope, do you think we shall have some new clothes before we go away? We ought, we are dreadfully shabby."

Penelope looked up with doubt in her face. "I don't know. I don't expect so; you see it would cost such a lot to get things for the four of us, and there will be the tickets too, and it must be a very long journey."

Esther sighed. "Well, we are disgracefully shabby. I don't know what we are going to do. Cousin Charlotte will think we are a tramp's children."

The next day, when the study hour came, Esther took a large basket of stockings out into the woods with her to darn. "I must try and mend these again," she said. "We don't seem to be going to have any new ones," and while Penelope with some trouble made her way through a chapter of the Invasion of the Crimea, and the younger ones collected fir-cones to take home for the kitchen fire, Esther sorted out and darned a motley collection of stockings of various sizes and every variety of shade of washed-out black and brown. She darned them quickly and thoroughly; but the great excrescences of blue, brown, grey, or black darning-wool would have brought terror to the heart of any one who suffered from tender feet. "There," she said, laying aside the last pair with a sigh, "at any rate we shall be sound if we are shabby. I wish, though, the darns didn't show quite so much," gazing regretfully at a large light-blue patch in the middle of one of Poppy's black stockings.

After that the Crimea was abandoned, and they all fell to talking of the strange new life which was drawing so close to them now, and by degrees, and in spite of their first dread, was so exciting, so full of interest, and all manner of possibilities.

CHAPTER III.

And now at last the parting was over, and the new life fairly begun. Esther, Penelope, Angela, and Poppy sat alone in a third-class carriage, looking out with blurred and smarting eyes at the fields and hedges rushing past them, at telegraph wires bowing and rising, at people and cattle and houses, and wondered if it could all be real or if they were only dreaming.

They had been very sad for the last few days, for the parting had been a painful wrench. In spite of all its drawbacks, the little house at Framley was their home, and they shed many bitter tears when they bade good-bye to it, and the woods and the walks, and all their well-known play-places. They wept, too, at leaving their mother, and even Lydia, cross, careless Lydia, for, after all, their mother and Lydia were the only two beings they knew well, and to be obliged to leave them and go entirely to utter strangers, in a quite unknown place, was very alarming.

"No one knows what it may be like at Dorsham," said Esther tragically, "and we—and we are not like children accustomed to going about. We don't know what are the right things to do—you know what I mean, we don't know how to behave, at least I don't. I hate having to meet any one in the street, for I never know what to say or do; and if I don't speak I know I am rude, and they think all sorts of things about me, and then I am miserable, and—and it'll be like that all the time at Cousin Charlotte's."

The other children looked awed until Penelope brightened up a little. "Never mind," she said hopefully, "we will go on just as we do now. After all, we can't be so very very dreadful, for mother is a lady, and knows, and we aren't wild savages; and Cousin Charlotte must tell us if we don't do things right, and we must remember for another time. Don't you think that will be all right, Esther?"

"I wish I could remember all the things Aunt Julia used to tell us," sighed Angela regretfully. "If we could we should know exactly what to do; but she was always telling me things and I've got them all mixed up."

"Will Tousin Charlotte whip us if we don't do right?" asked Poppy, in an awe-stricken voice.

"No one knows," said Esther, still in the same tragic, woebegone manner. "She may. I believe schoolmistresses are very strict. We shall know when we get there." Poppy's face grew longer and longer. "Mother says she is a dear old lady, but—but mother forgets, and she never had to live with her, as we've got to."

So their hearts were heavy with mingled dread and shyness, as well as sadness and a sense of desertion, as they took their seats in the train which was to convey them to Dorsham. In the luggage van were two small trunks containing their four scanty wardrobes, and all their toys and other treasures. In her hand Esther carried a large old purse of her mother's, containing their four tickets, and a sovereign which her mother had at the last moment given her to provide them all with stamps and notepaper and pocket-money for the next twelve months.

To children who had been in the habit of doing without pocket-money at all it seemed as though unbounded wealth were theirs, and they could never know want again.

Penelope carried a basket of provisions, which Lydia, with unusual care, had insisted on their taking. Penelope consented because she did not like to refuse Lydia's last request, but neither it nor its contents held the slightest interest for them until quite a long stretch of their journey had been covered. They were too unhappy to feel hungry. They would never care for food again, or for any one or anything but Framley and their mother and Lydia; and while they were in this frame of mind two