When Rolf began to desert the drawing-room for the nursery, Mrs. Markham used all her efforts to coax him back to her side, but she might as well have spoken to the wind. Rolf played with Joyce on the beach; he raced her up and down the little hillocks in the orchard, or hunted with her for wild flowers in the lanes that surrounded Marshlands. When the children were asleep, he invaded my quiet with requests to mend his broken toys or join him in some game. I grew quite expert in rigging his new boat, and dressed toy soldiers and sailors by the dozen. Sometimes I was inclined to rebel at such waste of time, but I remembered that Rolf had no playfellows; it was better for him to be playing spillikins or go-bang with me in the nursery than lounging listlessly about the drawing-room, listening to grown-up people’s talk; a natural child’s life was better for his health. Miss Cheriton told me more than once that people who came to the house thought Rolf so much improved. Certainly he was not so pale and fretful after a long morning spent on the beach in wading knee-deep to sail his boat or digging sand wells which Joyce filled out of her bucket. When he grew too rough or boisterous I always called Joyce away, and with Hannah and myself to look after them no harm could come to the children. I grew rather fond of Rolf, after a time, and his company would not have been irksome to me, but for his tiresome habit of repeating the speeches he had heard in the drawing-room. He always checked himself when he remembered, or when I held up my finger, but the half sentence would linger in my memory. But this was not the worst. I soon found out that anything I told him found its way into the drawing-room; in fact, Rolf was an inveterate chatterbox. With all his good intentions, he could not hold his tongue, and mischief was often the result. It was my habit to teach the children little lessons under the guise of a story, sometimes true, sometimes a mere invention. Rolf called them “Fenny’s Anecdotes,” but I had never discovered an anecdote about crossness. One day I found myself being severely lectured by Mrs. Markham for teaching her son the doctrine of works. “As though we should be saved by our works, Miss Fenton!” she finished, virtuously.