"Why, I do believe that is Hatty laughing!" exclaimed Christine, as the dinner-bell sounded, and she passed the door with her mother. "It is splendid, the way Bessie manages Hatty. I wish some of us could learn the art, for all this wrangling with Tom is so tiresome." "Bessie never loses patience with her," returned her mother; "never lets her feel that she is a trouble. I think you will find that is the secret of Bessie's influence. Your father and I are often grateful to her. 'What would that poor child do without her?' as your father often says; and I do believe her health would often suffer if Bessie did not turn her thoughts away from the things that were fretting her." CHAPTER V. THE OATLANDS POST-MARK. One day, about three months after her adventure in the Sheen Valley, Bessie was climbing up the steep road that led to the Lamberts' house. It was a lovely spring afternoon, and Bessie was enjoying the fresh breeze that was blowing up from the bay. Cliffe was steeped in sunshine, the air was permeated with the fragrance of lilac blended with the faint odors of the pink and white May blossoms. The flower-sellers' baskets in the town were full of dark-red wallflowers and lovely hyacinths. The birds were singing nursery lullabies over their nests in the Coombe Woods, and even the sleek donkeys, dragging up some invalids from the Parade in their trim little chairs, seemed to toil more willingly in the sweet spring sunshine. "How happy the world looks to-day!" said Bessie to herself; and perhaps this pleasant thought was reflected in her face, for more than one passer-by glanced at her half enviously. Bessie did not notice them; her soft gray eyes were fixed on the blue sky above her, or on the glimpses of water between the houses. Just before she turned into the avenue that led to the house, she stopped to admire the view. She was at the summit of the hill now; below her lay the town; where she stood she could look over the housetops to the shining water of the bay, with its rocky island in the middle. Bessie always called it the bay, but in reality it resembled a lake, it was so landlocked, so closed in by the opposite shore, except in one part; but the smooth expanse of water, shining in the sunlight, lacked the freedom and wild freshness of the open sea, though Bessie would look intently to a distant part, where nothing, as she knew, came between her and the Atlantic. "If we only went far enough, we should reach America; that gives one the idea of freedom and vastness," she thought. Bessie held the idea that Cliffe-on-Sea was one of the prettiest places in England, and it was certainly not devoid of picturesqueness.