"Good-bye to the last remnants of peace and quiet!" said Dorrie. "We're simply haunted by these wretched infants. They seem to think us fair game. I had the whole of the Gartley family, including the baby, sitting round my feet to-day." "I like children singly or in pairs, or even up to half a dozen," protested Diana, "but when it comes to having them wholesale like this, I feel as if I were minding a crèche. Oh, what a nuisance they are!" "It all comes of being too attractive, as the old lady said when she was struck by lightning!" laughed Gwethyn. The class was sketching the street and the market hall. Some of the girls were making very good attempts at the subject, and Miss Aubrey was most anxious for them to finish their paintings, so for two more afternoons they braved their fatal popularity. It was impossible to escape the too friendly juveniles. Scouts were generally waiting to convey the news of their arrival, and they would walk down the village followed by a long comet's tail of small fry, who would encamp close to them on the market-hall steps, bringing babies, puppies, or kittens, eating bread and treacle, munching green apples, and singing deafening school songs in chorus. It was not the slightest use to tell the youngsters to go away; they would only retreat to a distance of about ten yards, and then edge gradually nearer again. "I've tried to look cross and savage," said Gladwin Riley, "but they only grin." "I've been trying to civilize them," sighed Nan Bethell. "I suggested to one youth that it would be an improvement for him to wash his particularly grimy little fingers. He looked at me, and then at his hands for a moment or two--apparently it takes some time for the agricultural brain to turn over a new idea--then he remarked briefly: 'I likes 'em dirty!' and transferred them to his pockets. Any further arguments on my poor part would, I felt, be superfluous." Though the girls laughed over the humour of their experiences, they really found the children very trying, and both teacher and pupils were thankful when the sketches of the market hall were successfully finished. One final incident seemed the coping-stone of their annoyances. A child, even more eager than the rest to press near, was jostled by the others off the raised pathway where she was standing, and fell with a crash on to the road, almost upsetting Katrine's easel, and smashing a bottle of vinegar which she had been holding clasped in her arms. A woman, who proved to be the delinquent's mother, came out from a cottage, and after first administering a vigorous smack to her offspring, offered hot water wherewith to sponge the damaged clothing. "She was really very kind," said Katrine afterwards, "but I could see that she was all the time regretting such a waste of good vinegar, more than sympathizing with me for absorbing it. I don't believe this skirt will ever be fit to wear again. I know I shall feel like a pickled herring if I put it on!"