"Not intentionally, Mother, but she’s got a roving imagination, we see that every week. One time she’s teaching pigs to kill themselves in order to save the butcher’s feelings! Another time she wants to train calves to drive the sheep to market in order that land girls need never get up! _Don’t_ believe her, Mother dear, and for any sake don’t sorrow about her rotten fairy tales. They’ll find that brooch in Charles’ stomach when he dies of over-eating--if she hasn’t been wearing it all the while herself. Oh, I say, _do_ let’s shut up all this misery, Mum. An atmosphere of crime and sorrow is enough to make one ache to be back. Let’s cut it out, and cease persecuting wretched Pamela, because Auntie A. is a lunatic." If it did nothing else, this speech made Mrs. Romilly "sit up and take notice", as her son said cheerfully a few minutes later. Presently she went upstairs; and fortified by a "nice cup o’ tea" made and brought up, and administered by Mrs. Jeep herself, really did begin to think there might be something in what Adrian said. "Men are very level-headed," thought Mrs. Romilly, "they are not so emotional and impressionable as we are; after all, of course, poor Auntie A. is very vague." Out of doors Crow and the level-headed one went down to the bay in company. Sisters are given to a certain clearness of vision not always vouchsafed to mothers. Said Christobel: "Addie--do you _really_ think all that you said to Mother about Miss Ashington and Pam?" "Of course I don’t," promptly answered the shameless Adrian, "Miss Ashington is mad, right enough--raving--ought to be chained up before she drives all the farmers dotty, but she saw Pam right enough--so did Farr." "But, Addie----" "Oh, I know--you’re going to say one ought not to believe the evidence of one’s own sight if it is against people you love. You must--till one’s got something more reliable to see with than eyes. All the same life’s not worth living if Mother is in a distraught condition--and nobody comes to meals except the Floweret trying to draw us all together by bonds of family love. If she’s ’bright’ again at tea-time I shall take the yawl to Salterne and stay there. If Pam has got the thing it’s her look-out, she won’t enjoy having it--as I said before, she’s been awfully queer lately." In order to check another allusion to the Beak, Christobel suddenly proposed bathing from the yacht. "Time for a heavenly one before tea," she suggested. Adrian forgot all the sorrows of the household in an instant and received the plan with a cheer; they two went with a rush, which carried them breathless and giggling on to the sands among the seaweedy rocks and the anemone-peopled pools. Here was Hughie--testing secretly a storm or wind anchor that he had invented. Adrian upset him into a sea pool--which Hughie did not mind, because it diverted attention from the wind anchor--then the two elders proceeded to haul the dinghy down and make preparations.