"George is just miserable if he's nothing to do," she explained to her friends. "The doctor told me not to let him read too much or take up any special mental hobby, but sketching strikes the happy medium. He thoroughly enjoys pottering about in Mr. Castleton's studio, or making drawings down on the quay. It's not arduous work and yet it keeps him occupied. I like the house, and Fay can go to school near, so I expect we're fixed here until next spring at any rate. If I get too bored I shall run over to Paris and see my sister, but really I haven't been well lately myself, and it will do me good to take a thorough rest for a while." Fay, who had formed an enthusiastic friendship with Beata and Romola, was as pleased with Chagmouth as her parents. From the windows of Bella Vista she could look across the harbour to The Haven, and had already arranged a code of signals by which she might communicate with her chums. She was a bright, amusing girl, rather grown-up for her age, and the constant companion of her father and mother. "Fay runs the house!" Mrs. Macleod would declare sometimes; but she was immensely proud of her young daughter, and unwilling to thwart her in any of the projects which she might care to take up. These, indeed, were many. Fay dabbled in numerous hobbies, and her demands varied from photographic materials to special sandals for toe dancing. She thoroughly enjoyed life, and the freshness of her enthusiasm provided her parents with a perpetual interest. To those friends who urged boarding-school her mother was ready with the reply: "Why must we be parted from her? She's her father's best tonic! She keeps him young and makes him laugh. She's getting her education and living her home life at the same time, and that seems to me ideal. We shall probably have to spare her later on to be married, so we may as well make the most of her now while we've got her. It's the chief tragedy of parents that the children grow up and go away. We'll enjoy our nest while we have our one chick here. When the young ones are fledged, the old birds stop singing." [Illustration: MR. CASTLETON DID NOT LOOK AT ALL PLEASED]