"Arthur Wright actually brings his books down on to the shore," said Letty, "and does Greek and Euclid half the morning. He says he's working for a scholarship. You wouldn't catch Hugh or Cecil at that."
"I'm afraid I shouldn't," sighed Mrs. Rokeby. "To judge from their bad reports at school, it seems difficult enough to get them to learn anything in term time. As for mademoiselle, you might take the opportunity to talk to her a little, and improve your own French."
"No, thank you!" said Winnie, pulling a wry face. "No holiday lessons for me. I loathe French, and I never can understand a single word that mademoiselle says, so it's no use. If the Wrights like to sit on the sand and 'parlez-vous,' they may. They're so fat, they can't rush about like we do. That's why they keep so tidy. Charlotte's waist is exactly twice as big as mine—we measured them yesterday with a piece of string—and Aggie's cheeks are as round as puddings. You should see how they all pant when they play cricket. They scarcely get any runs."
"And they really eat far more even than we do, mother," said Letty. "Aggie had five buns on the shore yesterday, and Eric took sixteen biscuits. I know he did, for we counted them, and he nearly emptied the box."
"The Chesters are five times as jolly," declared Winnie. "Both Charlie and Hilda went out shrimping with us this morning, and got sopping wet, but they didn't mind in the least, and Mrs. Chester only laughed when they went back. She said sea water didn't hurt. She's far nicer than Mrs. Barrington. I wouldn't be Ruth Barrington for all the world. She and Edna never have any breakfast, and they're made to do the queerest things."
The unlucky little Barringtons were possessed of parents who clung to theories which they themselves described as "wholesome ideas," and their friends denounced as "absurd cranks." Many and various were the experiments which they tried upon their children's health and education, sometimes with rather disastrous results. Being at present enthusiastic members of a "No Breakfast League," which held that two meals a day were amply sufficient for the requirements of any rational human being, they had limited their family repasts to luncheon and supper, at which only vegetarian dishes were permitted to appear; and the poor children, hungry with sea air and with running about on the sands, who would have enjoyed an unstinted supply of butcher's meat and bread and butter, were carefully dieted on plasmon, prepared nuts, and many patent foods, which their mother measured out in exact portions, keeping a careful record in her diary of the amount they were allowed to consume, and taking the pair to be weighed every week upon the automatic machine at the railway station. Their costumes consisted of plain blue over-all pinafores and sandals, and they wore neither hats nor stockings.
"It's all right for the seaside," grumbled Ruth to her intimate friends, "because we can go into the water without minding getting into a mess; but we have to wear exactly the same in town, and it's horrible. You can't think how every one stares at as, just as if we were a show. Sometimes ladies stop us, and ask our governess if we've lost our hats, and hadn't she better tie our handkerchiefs over our heads? We shouldn't dare to go out alone even if we were allowed, we look so queer. We went once to the post by ourselves, and some rude boys chased us all the way, calling out 'Bare-legs!' It's dreadfully cold in winter, too, without stockings, and when it rains our heads get wet through, and we have to be dried with towels when we come in again. I wonder why we can't be dressed like other people. I wish I had Belle Stuart's clothes; they're perfectly lovely!"
Ruth's rather pathetic little face always bore the injured expression of one who cherishes a grievance. She was a thin, pale child, who did not look as though she flourished upon her peculiar system of bringing up, which seemed to have the unfortunate effect of completely spoiling her temper, and making her see life through an extremely blue pair of spectacles. This summer she certainly thought she had a just cause of complaint, since her two schoolboy brothers, instead of spending their holidays as usual at the seaside, had been dispatched on a walking-tour to Switzerland with a certain German professor, who, in accordance with the latest educational fad, was conducting a select little party of boys on an open-air pilgrimage, the main features of which seemed to be to walk bare-foot by day and to sleep in a kind of wigwam at night, which they erected out of alpenstocks and mackintoshes.
"It's too disgusting!" said Ruth dolefully. "Just when Edna and I had been looking forward all the term to the boys coming home, and making so many plans of what we would do and the fun we would have, some wretched person sent father a copy of The Educational Times, with a long account of this horrid walking-tour, and he said it was the exact thing for Clifford and Keith, and insisted upon arranging it at once. I think mother was really dreadfully disappointed. I believe she wanted to have them home as much as we did, because she said they ought to go to the dentist's, and she must look over their clothes, and she should like to give them some phosphates tonic; but father said they could have their teeth attended to at Geneva, and she could send the tonic to the professor, and ask him to see that they took it. I know the boys will be furious; they hate taking medicine: they generally keep it in their mouths, and spit it out afterwards. They'll have to talk German all day long too, and they can't bear that. You've no idea how they detest languages. I had a picture post-card from Clifford yesterday, and he said his feet were horribly sore with walking bare-foot, and his tent blew away one night, and he was obliged to sleep in the open air."
No greater contrast could be found to the Barringtons than the Chester children. Charlie, the elder, a lively young pickle of twelve, was on terms of great intimacy with all the fishermen and sailor boys whose acquaintance he could cultivate, talking in a learned manner of main-sheets, fore-stays, jibs, gaffs, booms and bowsprits, and using every nautical term he could manage to pick up. He had a very good idea of rowing, and would often persuade the men to let him go out with them in their boats, taking his turn at an oar, much to their amusement, and setting log lines with the serious air of a practised hand. His jolly, friendly ways won him general favour, and he was allowed to make himself at home on many of the little fishing smacks, learning to hoist sails, to steer, and to cast nets, though sometimes a too inquiring mind led him to interfere on his own account in the navigation, with the result that he would be unceremoniously bundled back to shore again, with a warning to "keep out of this" in the future.