"Mrs. Jones is to go with you, I suppose?"
Muriel nodded, and shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of distaste.
"Think how dull I shall be, with only that stupid old woman for a companion, and she never will allow me to make friends with other children on the sands. Oh, Marigold, how I wish I could persuade father to let me go to the same place as you and your aunts!"
"It is quite a small village on the north coast of Cornwall," Marigold said; adding eagerly, "Oh, Muriel, do try to come! Think what a splendid time we should have together!"
"Yes," agreed Muriel, her face brightening. "What is the village called?"
"Boscombe."
"Boscombe?" Muriel repeated. "I shall remember that!"
"It is not very far from Bude," Muriel explained. "You have to go by coach part of the way, so Aunt Mary told me. Boscombe is not a fashionable place at all; but there are several good lodging-houses that have been lately built. When my aunts were little girls they used to go there every summer and live in a furnished cottage that belonged to their father; but it was pulled down many years ago, and an hotel built on the same ground."
Whilst Marigold and Muriel were walking home from school together, the latter reverted to the subject of the coming holidays, and said she should try her hardest to induce her father to send her to Boscombe.
"Father is coming home for a few days at the end of the week," she told her companion; "and then he will most probably decide where Mrs. Jones and I are to go."