Immediately every girl had started to her feet: a white table-cloth was spread on the lawn, cups and saucers followed suit; tea, cake, bread and butter, dishes of fruit were soon being eagerly discussed. The small children gave a whoop of excitement, and Robina returned, still carrying Curly Pate, with the others in her train. During tea, one of the little ones suggested that they should turn Robina into a queen. No sooner had the thought been uttered than it was put into execution. She was seated on a special chair and crowned with flowers, which the children had been gathering for her. A wreath of flowers surrounded her laughing face, and a garland of flowers was placed round her neck. Curly Pate looked on just for a minute, then said eagerly: "Me too! me too!" "Why should there not be two queens?" said Robina. "Gather some white flowers for the baby, somebody." "Somebody" meant everybody--that is, except Harriet, for even Jane was drawn into the whirlpool of excitement. Nothing could be prettier than the happy faces of the children; and especially of the queen with her flowers--her cheeks slightly flushed, her queer, half-wild, half-pathetic eyes brighter and darker than usual, one arm encircling Curly Pate's dear little fat body, and of Curly Pate herself, shrieking with delight while a crown of white daisies encircled her little head. It was on this scene that Mrs Burton, accompanied by a gentleman whom the girls had never seen before, suddenly appeared. Book 1--CHAPTER FOUR. AN UNUSUAL PRIZE. The gentleman was holding by the hand a small boy. The boy could not have been more than seven or eight years of age. He was rather a little boy for that, so that some of the girls put him down as younger. He was a very beautiful boy. He had a little dark face, with that nut-brown skin at once clear and yet full of colour which is in itself a great loveliness. His eyes were large and brown like the softest velvet. He had very thick brown hair with a sort of bronze tone in it, and this hair hung in ringlets round his head. The boy was dressed in a peculiar way. He wore a suit of brown velvet, which fitted his agile little figure rather tightly. He had brown silk stockings and little breeches, and shoes with steel buckles. Round his neck he wore a large lace collar made in a sort of Vandyke fashion. Altogether, this little boy looked exactly as though he had stepped out of a picture. He was not at all shy. His eyes travelled over the scene, and they fixed themselves on Curly Pate, while Curly Pate's eyes gazed on him. There was dead silence for a minute, all the girls in the school looking neither at Mrs Burton nor at the gentleman, but at the queer, new, little, beautiful boy. Then Curly Pate broke the stillness. "I is kene," (queen), she said, "and--him is king!" and she pointed with rapture at the boy.