"What a lot of things have happened to-day!" exclaimed Betty when she and Madge were both in bed, and Jane had left the room with her usual piece of good advice to them to go to sleep at once. Two children occupying beds in the same room were not very likely to take such a sensible piece of advice, and in point of fact Madge and Betty often talked away merrily for a long time. "Sometimes it seems as if nothing happened for weeks, and to-day there are so many things I can hardly remember them all," continued Betty. "Doesn't it seem a long time since we let down the rope-ladder and that boy climbed into the Eagle's Nest?"
"Yes. But do be quiet, I want to go to sleep," said Madge rather crossly. She had been feeling so much happier since she had quite forgotten Lewis Brand and the difficulties connected with him, that she was not at all grateful for having the whole affair brought back to her mind again.
But Betty could not leave the subject alone. "Do you think Lewis is a nice boy?" she inquired. "I didn't like him at first, because he has such a white face and hardly any eyebrows!"
"What a silly reason for not liking a person," said Madge. "As if they could help their eyebrows!"
"I know it's silly," returned Betty humbly. "But don't you find it very difficult to like people when they have nasty faces?"
"I never think about their faces," said Madge in a superior way. "If they are jolly I like them soon enough, however ugly they are!"
"Oh, so do I!" exclaimed Betty, now rather ashamed of her criticisms as she found that Madge considered them silly. "At first I thought he was going to be rather proud and stuck-up because he was so much older than we are, but afterwards he seemed very nice when we began to play. I wonder if we shall ever see him again?"
"I'm sure I don't know! Let us go to sleep now, I'm tired of talking;" and Madge burrowed so deeply under the bed-clothes that it was quite impossible to carry on any sort of conversation with her.
Perhaps it was because Madge went to sleep rather early that evening that she was enabled to wake proportionately early the following morning. It was fairly light and fine, though not sunny. She got out of bed and went to the window. Madge invariably looked out of the window the first thing in the morning, but to-day she was rewarded by seeing something that had never met her eyes before.
On the lawn, directly in front of the house, was a large flower-bed, containing many roses of different colours. They were Mrs. West's favourite flowers, and even when she could not go out, she enjoyed seeing them from the drawing-room window. In the middle of this flower-bed now stood Jack and Jill, cropping off and devouring dozens of rose-buds with evident relish.