"Course," said Hugh John, who was engaged in eating grass like an ox, "we know it is true about _Rob Roy_. She read us one whole volume, and there wasn't no Rob Roy, nor any fighting in it. So we pelted her with fir-cones to make her stop and read over _Treasure Island_ to us instead!" "Yes, though we had heard it twenty times already," commented Sir Toady Lion, trying his hardest to pinch his brother's legs on the sly. "Books wifout pictures is silly!" said a certain Maid Margaret, a companion new to the honourable company, who was weaving daisy-chains, her legs crossed beneath her, Turk fashion. In literature she had got as far as words of one syllable, and had a poor opinion even of them. "_I_ had read all Scott's novels long before I was your age," I said reprovingly. The children received this announcement with the cautious silence with which every rising generation listens to the experiences of its elders when retailed by way of odious comparison. "Um-m!" said Sir Toady, the licensed in speech; "_we_ know all that. Oh, yes; and you didn't like fruit, and you liked medicine in a big spoon, and eating porridge and--" "Oh, we know--we know!" cried all the others in chorus. Whereupon I informed them what would have happened to us thirty years ago if we had ventured to address our parents in such fashion. But Sweetheart, with the gravity of her age upon her, endeavoured to raise the discussion to its proper level. "Scott writes such a lot before you get at the story," she objected, knitting her brows; "why couldn't he just have begun right away?" "With Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey drawing at their pipes in the oak-pannelled dining room, and Black Dog outside the door, and Pew coming tapping along the road with his stick!" cried Hugh John, turning off a sketchy synopsis of his favourite situations in fiction. "Now that's what I call a proper book!" said Sir Toady, hastily rolling himself out of the way of being kicked. (For with these unusual children, the smooth ordinary upper surfaces of life covered a constant succession of private wars and rumours of wars, which went on under the table at meals, in the schoolroom, and even, it is whispered, in church.) As for blithe Maid Margaret, she said nothing, for she was engaged in testing the capacities of a green slope of turf for turning somersaults upon. "In Sir Walter Scott's time," I resumed gravely, "novels were not written for little girls--" "Then why did you give us Miss Edgeworth to read?" said Sweetheart, quickly. But I went on without noticing the interruption, "Now, if you like, I will tell you some of Sir Walter's stories over again, and then I will mark in your own little edition the chapters you can read for yourselves." The last clause quieted the joyous shout which the promise of a story--any sort of a story--had called forth. An uncertain look crept over their faces, as if they scented afar off that abomination of desolation--"lessons in holiday time."