“Oh yes; it was in the drawing-room. And what else do you think I found? Why, Cherie administering”--and he pointed down his throat, and made a gulp with a wild grimace of triumph. “On the sly! Ha! ha!” Anna felt as if the ground had opened under her feet, but she answered gravely-- “Poor Gerald went through a great deal yesterday, and is quite knocked up, so no wonder he needs some strengthening medicine.” “Strengthening grandmother! Don’t you think I know better than that?” he cried, with a caper and a grin. “Of course you had to have some cordial when you were taken out of the water.” “And don’t you know what it was?” “I know the fisher-people carry stuff about with them in case of accidents.” “That’s the way with girls--just to think one knows nothing at all.” “What do you know, Adrian?” “Know? Why, I haven’t been about with Kit and Ted Harewood for nothing! Jolly good larks it is to see how all of you take for granted that a fellow never knew the taste of anything but tea and milk-and-water.” “But what do you know the taste of?” she asked, with an earnestness that provoked the boy to tease and put on a boasting manner, so that she could not tell how much he was pretending for the sake of amazing and tormenting her, in which he certainly succeeded. However, his attention was diverted by coming round the corner to where there was a view of Anscombe Bay, when he immediately began to fight his battles o’er again, and show where they had been groping in the mud and seaweed in pursuit of sea-urchins, and stranded star-fish, and crabs. “And it wasn’t a forest after all, it was just a sell--nothing but mud and weed, only Fergus would go and poke in it, and there were horrid great rough stones and rocks too, and I tumbled over one.” Anna here became conscious that the whole place was the resort of the afternoon promenaders of Rockquay, great and small, of all ranks and degrees, belonging to the “middle class” or below it, and that they might themselves become the object of attention; and she begged her brother to turn back and wait till they could have the place to themselves. “These are a disgusting lot of cads,” he agreed, “but there won’t be such a jolly tide another time. I declare I see the very rock where I saw the sea-mouse--out there! red and shiny at the top.” Here a well-dressed man, who had just come up the Coast-guard path, put aside his pipe, and taking off his hat, deferentially asked-- “Have I the honour of addressing Sir Adrian Vanderkist?”