This was news indeed, such news that at first the girls were hardly able to believe it. They had never been in Devonshire, and had not seen their mother's uncle, Dr. Tremayne. Their father, Dr. Ramsay, busy with his own professional work, had little time to spare for visiting, and when he snatched a holiday the family had generally gone to Scotland, or to some east-coast seaside resort. He was fond of the north, which has a charm all its own, but his wife was a Devon woman, who could not forget the county of her birth. She had told her children stories of its beauties, its mild air, its early flowers, its legends of pixies, its smugglers' coves and blue stretches of sea, its moors and dancing brooks, till they had come to look upon it as a sort of Elfland, a fairy-tale country that had no more real existence than the kingdom at the top of Jack's beanstalk. Uncle David and Aunt Nellie, too, though familiar household names, were entities as unsubstantial as characters in a book. To go and stay with them at Durracombe seemed as amazing as a visit to Robinson Crusoe's island or a sojourn with Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Seas. When their minds were adjusted to the new idea they demanded details. "Three months! We shall miss school for a whole term. Oh, Mummie, what fun! Shall we find cowslips in the fields? And can we go paddling in the brook? It sounds gorgeous!" "You certainly won't find cowslips in January. Don't expect impossibilities. And as for paddling, I forbid anything of the sort before Easter. Don't congratulate yourselves that you're going to have a term's holiday. There's a very nice little day school in Durracombe, kept by the late vicar's daughters, only ten minutes' walk from Uncle David's house. Don't pull faces! Of course you must go to school, and you'll probably like it. How long can I stay? About a week. I shall take you there and see you settled, then I must fly back to Father, for he's not accustomed to doing without the whole of his family. I wish he could have come with us, but it's quite impossible for him to leave his patients at present. If you catch another cold, Mavis, before we go away, I shall be really cross with you. We hope Devonshire air will work a cure and stop these perpetual bouts of bronchitis. As for you, Merle, there's really no reason for sending _you_, except----"