"I don't know what you mean by rude," she said obstinately. "It's very dull sitting here and making castles with babies; and Tom and I want to go on the rocks."

"Well, your mamma will take you some day, when she feels better," said nurse. "She's had a wearing time since she came. No doubt it's a trial to see other children, with no decent nurse to look after them, running wild and shouting like wild Indians; but I have my duty to you and your mamma, and you must just bear it as best you can. You should take example by Miss Amy and be contented, and be glad to think you have Master d.i.c.k back with you again."

"Mother always makes a fuss about d.i.c.k," said Susie.

"Well," said nurse, rising with difficulty and shaking the sand from her dress, "I'm going to take the little ones in, Miss Amy and all. She can play with Master d.i.c.k whilst I get baby to sleep. Perhaps you will help me, Miss Susie?"

Of course Susie would help; her face lightened at the thought! All the jealous lines disappeared as if by magic. Alick's little hands felt like rose leaves on her face. She forgot the twins, forgot to be cross, as she folded her arms tightly round him. She had half a mind to go in with them and have a nice nursery game; but when she hesitated and looked back, she saw Tom waving impatiently, and it was difficult to say no.

She handed Alick to nurse, and stood staring after him as he leant his round red face over her shoulder and waved his chubby hands. When they all disappeared on to the parade at the top of the cliff she turned and flew over the sands.

"Take off your shoes and stockings," shouted the twins; "us both always do." And Susie, without a thought, unlaced her boots, and flung them hither and thither, never stopping to look behind her or to be sure that they were safe. The water was quite warm and the sea was sapphire blue.

It was a very low tide, and the rocks stretched away to a long, low island, crowned with gra.s.s, where a few nimble goats perched on unlikely crags. From rock to rock flew Susie's active feet, but Dot was always ahead; and so, slipping, splashing, torn by the rocks, drenched with the warm spray, Susie revelled in a long hour of liberty. She was wild with excitement, eager to come again, full of reckless promises.

"We'll go as far as the island another day," said Dot, "but we have to choose a low tide. Aren't you glad now that you didn't go home and play like a baby?"

Susie was hastily rubbing the sand out of her toes and hunting for her stockings. Her feet were very cold, and her fingers seemed thumbs. She did not answer Dot. She did not feel quite sure what to say; things always looked so different before and after, and what nurse had said about a _wearing time_ stuck in her mind.

"Well, aren't you?" said Dot impatiently.

"No," said Susie bluntly.

She stopped to lace Tom's boots, and then looked up with a face that had grown suddenly red.

"I can't help it," she said desperately, "but I never _am_ glad afterwards."

She went on lacing laboriously, whilst Tom lay on his face kicking and plunging about. Dot looked at her curiously.

"But you wanted to come on the rocks?" she said.

"Oh yes," said Susie. "I shall always want to come, but I shall be sorry afterwards. I think I ought to warn you because I am like that. I can't help it. It is silly of nurse," she went on, as she tied the lace in a draggled knot. "Why shouldn't we play with you? I feel _perfectly certain_--" She seemed to remember using those words before on an unfortunate occasion, so she hastily changed them. "I am _quite sure_ that you are a very good companion. Me and Tom couldn't learn any harm from you."

She was persuading herself, not the twins, but it was a twin who answered.

"We can have lots of fun," said Dot, "and no one will know. The first chance we will cut over the rocks to the town and buy some sweets."

"Generally I have to look after the little ones," said Susie.

"Well, no one would eat them if they stayed here alone till you came back, would they, stupid?"

"No," said Susie, rather shortly.

She was not quite sure that she liked being called "stupid."

"I can't think how all this sand has got into your stockings," said nurse. "I should hope you didn't paddle after I left you, against my orders!"

There was silence, and in another moment Susie would have told the truth, but before the words came faltering out nurse spoke again.

"But there! I can trust you, with all your troublesome ways," she said.

And this time Susie _could not_ speak.

CHAPTER VII.

As time went on it grew so perilously easy to be deceitful! No one thought of doubting them--no one thought of asking what they did when they were left alone.

Day after day, as nurse's toiling figure disappeared up the wooden steps on to the cliff, Dash and Dot burst round the corner of the rocks, and almost without a word spoken, Susie's shoes and stockings were flung to the winds, and she was scampering at headlong speed from pool to pool, with Tom at her heels--like a wild creature, and in a condition that would have fairly horrified poor nurse, who held that all well-conducted young ladies, like the Queen of Spain, should have no visible legs!

Really, in her heart, Susie did not like the twins so very much. They were wild and unkempt, and very boisterous; their twinkling black eyes radiated mischief, but it was the sort of mischief that bewildered Susie and rather frightened her. Nurse puzzled over her mangled stockings and the hideous rents in her skirts, and Mrs. Beauchamp's patient fingers grew stiff with darning; but whilst Susie flew about the rocks, careless and dishevelled, she always forgot how sorry she was going to be afterwards, and how uncomfortable her conscience was at night.

"I really won't go again," she said to herself time after time; and yet the first sight of the twins splashing round the rocks scattered all her good resolutions to the winds.

"I am glad I can trust you," her mother often said. "You are a comfort to me."

"Troublesome comforts I should call them," nurse said; and, like many of nurse's wise sayings, it was remembered by Susie, and left a little sting in her memory.

This afternoon she came to the beach quite resolved to withstand temptation, and to play demurely with the little ones. It had rained all morning, and now Tom had gone to the town with his mother to buy some new sand-shoes. For some time Susie was perfectly happy building castles of sand and letting the rising tide flow into her moat. Nurse was indulgent enough to waste a few of her valuable minutes in making a scarlet flag and mounting it on a wooden knitting-pin, whilst d.i.c.k and Amy busily ornamented its base with fan sh.e.l.ls. d.i.c.k was the king, with Alick for his knight--rather a top-heavy knight, with wayward legs--and Susie and Amy were the besieging army, fighting with desperate courage as long as they had breath.

Susie flung herself panting on the sand. "Isn't it funny, nurse," she said, "that all the bad men were good kings, and all the good men had to be beheaded?"

"I don't know much about any king, Miss Susie," said nurse, "except King Henry the Eighth, and _his_ beheading was on the other side. He was a bad man if you like, and I never had any patience with him."

"Oh, I forgot him," said Susie; "and I wouldn't say that King Edward was a bad man exactly, though he is a good king; but he isn't what you would call _prime_, is he?"

"Oh no, my dear, not prime," said nurse.

"And Charles the Second wasn't prime either," said Susie.

"I don't know about him, my dear," said nurse. "But to go back to King Henry. I always felt very much for poor Annie Bullen. A monster of iniquity I call him, dressed up in his ermine and fallals, and not a policeman or a judge daring to say him nay."

"How nice it is that common gentlemen don't behave like kings!" said Amy.

"If I was a queen, I would throw my crown away when it was time for my beheadal."

"No, you'd cry," said d.i.c.k solemnly.

"_I_ wouldn't," said Susie. "I'd march proudly out with my lovely hair floating in the wind, and my swannish neck rising out of a black velvet dress, and I'd stand on the block and say, 'I _will_ my limbs--that means my legs and arms--to the four quarters of the country, and my heart to the tyrant who broke it.'"

"Much he'd want it," said Tom disdainfully.

But Susie stood declaiming on the sand-hill, inspired by her own eloquence, and gazed at with admiration by Amy for a courage she could not match.

"O Susie, how brave you are!" she said. "They'd have to kill you to get at it; you couldn't get at your heart till you were dead. I don't believe I could ever be as brave as that. I know I should cry."