"Tell mother Fred is all right, and keeping out of debt, and so one must not mind a few harmless vagaries."
"Broken china, indeed!" muttered Uncle Geoff when I had finished reading this clause. "Broken fiddlesticks! Why, the lad must be weak in his head to spend his money on such rubbish." Uncle Geoffrey was never very civil to Fred.
Dot did not say any more, and I began a long story, to keep his tongue quiet. As it was purposely uninteresting, and told in a monotonous voice, it soon had the effect of making him drowsy. When I reached this point, I stole softly from the room. It was bright moonlight when I lay down in bed, and all night long I dreamed of a rippling sea and broad sands, over which Dot and I were walking, hand in hand.
CHAPTER XV.
LIFE AT THE BRAMBLES.
It was a lovely evening when we arrived at Roseberry.
"We lead regular hermit lives at the Brambles, away from the haunts of men," observed Miss Ruth; but I was too much occupied to answer her. Dot and I were peeping through the windows of the little omnibus that was conveying us and our luggage to the cottage. Miss Ruth had a pretty little pony carriage for country use; but she would not have it sent to the station to meet us—the omnibus would hold us all, she said. Nurse could go outside; the other two servants who made up the modest establishment at the Brambles had arrived the previous day.
Roseberry was a straggling little place, without much pretension to gentility. A row of white lodging-houses, with green verandas, looked over the little parade; there was a railed-in green enclosure before the houses, where a few children played.
Half a dozen bathing-machines were drawn up on the beach; beyond was the Preventive station, and the little white cottages where the Preventive men lived, with neat little gardens in front.