"Good boy, Sandy!" said his mother, "to take care of her."
"But how did they get damp?" asked Marjorie suspiciously.
"Just a little water p'raps got on them," he replied, feeling the tone unkind after his mother's praise.
"Then you have been in mischief?" asked Marjorie.
"Barbedie walked in er water," the baby replied, as if she had been doing a good work.
"You shouldn't have let her," Mrs. Bethune said caressingly.
"Barbe don't want lettin'," answered Sandy philosophically. "She does wivout."
The sweets of mischief whetted the boys' appetites for more. They applied themselves with zeal to a work they had in hand, and for the next few days little was seen of them.
One evening they were standing in a disused corner of the Palace grounds, under the ruined window of the old banqueting hall, which formed part of the wall enclosing the gardens of the modern wing of the house. The corner where they stood was immediately adjoining the wall of their own garden, and was part of an overgrown shrubbery between the ruins and the parks.