"It's too disgusting!" said Ruth dolefully. "Just when Edna and I had been looking forward all the term to the boys coming home, and making so many plans of what we would do and the fun we would have, some wretched person sent father a copy of _The Educational Times_, with a long account of this horrid walking-tour, and he said it was the exact thing for Clifford and Keith, and insisted upon arranging it at once. I think mother was really dreadfully disappointed. I believe she wanted to have them home as much as we did, because she said they ought to go to the dentist's, and she must look over their clothes, and she should like to give them some phosphates tonic; but father said they could have their teeth attended to at Geneva, and she could send the tonic to the professor, and ask him to see that they took it. I know the boys will be furious; they hate taking medicine: they generally keep it in their mouths, and spit it out afterwards. They'll have to talk German all day long too, and they can't bear that. You've no idea how they detest languages. I had a picture post-card from Clifford yesterday, and he said his feet were horribly sore with walking bare-foot, and his tent blew away one night, and he was obliged to sleep in the open air." No greater contrast could be found to the Barringtons than the Chester children. Charlie, the elder, a lively young pickle of twelve, was on terms of great intimacy with all the fishermen and sailor boys whose acquaintance he could cultivate, talking in a learned manner of main-sheets, fore-stays, jibs, gaffs, booms and bowsprits, and using every nautical term he could manage to pick up. He had a very good idea of rowing, and would often persuade the men to let him go out with them in their boats, taking his turn at an oar, much to their amusement, and setting log lines with the serious air of a practised hand. His jolly, friendly ways won him general favour, and he was allowed to make himself at home on many of the little fishing smacks, learning to hoist sails, to steer, and to cast nets, though sometimes a too inquiring mind led him to interfere on his own account in the navigation, with the result that he would be unceremoniously bundled back to shore again, with a warning to "keep out of this" in the future. He was the envy of his eight-year-old sister Hilda, who would have liked to follow him through thick and thin, but the sailors drew the line at little girls, and would politely request "missy" to "return home to her ma," as there was no place for her "on this 'ere craft," much to her indignation. She consoled herself, however, by organizing the games of the younger Wrights and Rokebys, making wonderful sand harbours with their aid, and sailing a fleet of toy boats with as keen an enthusiasm as if they were real ones.