Towards the end of August the party broke up and scattered. Carmel had received an invitation from English relations of her stepfather to join them on a motor tour; the three little boys were to be taken to rooms at the seaside by Miss Mason, their late governess; Lilias and Dulcie went to stay with friends, and Cousin Clare had arranged to attend a conference. She agreed, however, that when Lilias and Dulcie returned from their visit, they should go with her in the car for a week-end to Tivermouth, to see how the boys were getting on. "If you'll promise we may stay at an hotel!" stipulated Lilias. "I wouldn't spend a week-end in rooms with those three imps for the world. I'd like to see them, but not at too close quarters." "It's quite improbable that their landlady would have bedrooms for us," said Cousin Clare. "So in any case we should be obliged to stop at an hotel. In this crowded season I shall engage rooms beforehand." "Hurrah!" triumphed Dulcie, who was anxious for a grown-up experience. "I must say I hate staying with the boys near the beach; the sitting-room's always overflowing with their seaweed and other messes." "What a joke if _I_ were to turn up at the hotel too!" said Carmel. "I believe the Rogers are going down to Devonshire. I shall tell them the date you'll be at Tivermouth. They'll possibly like to meet you." "Oh, do! It would be such fun!" agreed Dulcie. "We'd have an absolutely topping time together. Persuade them as hard as you can!" "I'll do my best!" agreed Carmel. As it is impossible to follow the adventures of everybody, we will concern ourselves particularly with the experiences of our heroine, who was to take her first motor tour among English scenery. The party in the comfortable Rover car consisted of Major and Mrs. Rogers, their daughter Sheila, their guest Carmel, and a chauffeur. Major Rogers was still suffering from the effects of wounds, and was more or less of a semi-invalid, a condition which made him fussy at times, and too independent at others, for directly he felt a trifle better he would immediately begin to break all the rules that the doctors had laid down for his treatment. He was an amusing, humorous sort of man, who would jest between spasms of pain, and generally found something to laugh at in the various episodes of their journey. There is a laughter, though, that is more the expression of supreme courage than of genuine mirth, and the drawn lines round the Major's mouth told of sleepless nights and days of little ease, and of trouble that hurts worse even than physical pain; for one son lay on a Belgian battle-field, another on the heights near Salonika, with no cross to mark the grave, and a third deep under the surging waters of the Atlantic.