"Oh! they are jolly little cards," he answered carelessly. "I am grateful to them in a sense. They are the raison d'etre for this excursion after all. An old fogey like myself couldn't submit to the indignity of paddling in the surf without the legitimate excuse of the necessity for his presence in order to smack the little Arnotts with their own spades when they become unruly. It won't be all heaven, I expect." Pamela spent the next few days in preparing for the wonderful holiday, assisted by her small excited family, and a silent and detached governess, who looked on, while Pamela shopped extensively for every one, with a furtive disapproval in her dark eyes, as though disliking the idea of this change to the sea, and her compulsory participation in it. When Pamela presented her with a smart bathing costume she at first declined the gift. "I can't swim," she protested. "And I'm afraid of the sea. I shouldn't like to bathe--really." "Oh! but," said Pamela, feeling unaccountably disappointed, "we shall all bathe. You won't be afraid with Mr Arnott; he will teach you to swim in no time. It will be half the fun." Blanche blushed at this suggestion that Arnott should teach her to swim, and looked with greater disfavour than ever at the ridiculous garment in Pamela's hand. "I'm too big a coward to learn," she said. "I should hate it. Please don't ask me." Miss Maitland was, Pamela decided, a most unsatisfactory girl to deal with. She told Arnott of the difficulty, and held up the amazing garment of navy alpaca and white braid for his inspection. "It is so pretty," she said. "And she looked at it as though it were indecent." He laughed. "As a sex you are all more or less mock modest," he announced. "You will half undress of an evening, and blush to be discovered in a perfectly decorous petticoat. Pack the thing in with your own clothes, and I'll undertake to state when she sees every one else in the water she will yearn to get in too. We will cure her of her distaste for salt water." And so the bathing dress went to Muizenberg in Pamela's trunk. CHAPTER FIFTEEN. With their arrival in Muizenberg Pamela took entirely upon herself the care of the children. She informed Miss Maitland that she was to regard her stay there in the light of a holiday; she was to go and come as she chose, and leave the children with her. "But that won't be any holiday for you," objected Blanche. "It is my holiday being with them," Pamela answered.