So it happened that it was a little blue girl--clad in one of Orme's shabbiest overalls--who met Mrs. Bethune's returning chair, and was lifted to her knee for a "yide." "But what has happened? where are her own clothes?" Mrs. Bethune asked, recognising the substitute. "We thought they were just a little damp," said Sandy in explanation, climbing up the back of the chair to kiss his mother. "Good boy, Sandy!" said his mother, "to take care of her." "But how did they get damp?" asked Marjorie suspiciously. "Just a little water p'raps got on them," he replied, feeling the tone unkind after his mother's praise. "Then you have been in mischief?" asked Marjorie. "Barbedie walked in er water," the baby replied, as if she had been doing a good work. "You shouldn't have let her," Mrs. Bethune said caressingly. "Barbe don't want lettin'," answered Sandy philosophically. "She does wivout." * * * * * The sweets of mischief whetted the boys' appetites for more. They applied themselves with zeal to a work they had in hand, and for the next few days little was seen of them. One evening they were standing in a disused corner of the Palace grounds, under the ruined window of the old banqueting hall, which formed part of the wall enclosing the gardens of the modern wing of the house. The corner where they stood was immediately adjoining the wall of their own garden, and was part of an overgrown shrubbery between the ruins and the parks. Both boys were exceedingly dirty. Faces, capless heads, fingers, clothes, all bore traces of the underground work from which they had just emerged. They had burrowed from their cave, and were mightily pleased at their point of exit. No place could be more secluded, nor less likely to be discovered. And from the ruined wall close by, under the shelter of a spreading elder, they were able to drop easily either into the cathedral yard or the Bishop's garden. "Now the game begins. We've got a base of operations," said David grandly. "How much?" asked Sandy. "What you work from, and what you fall back upon, if you get besieged. And it's a good base too," he added, looking round. "We've got to make this passage hard and firm, and then hide it from that prying gardener." "An' we can pay back Mrs. Lytchett," said Sandy with joy. "How?" "Oh, I know! She just hates us going to the Bishop's window. He told me he'd just got a new tin of gingerbread, an' now we can get in wivout goin' through the gate. She's made that gate so it clicks." "But you mustn't let her see." "Not me! If she comes, we'll just run round the house, and she'll fink we've come back way. And then she'll run round to catch us, an' we shan't be there." Sandy spoke with the certainty of much experience, as, indeed, he had a right to do. "Our character is all gone," David said thoughtfully, "so it don't much matter how bad we are."