It’s funny how sometimes sleep seems to run away and won’t be caught anyhow!  Next night it was just the same.  Only it was quite different, too.  You know what I mean.  That funny bedroom, with its white curtains covered with pink rose-buds, and the venetian blinds, and the moon shining through, mixed up somehow with the sound of the waves; and to have Lottie in the same large bed with me—­oh, it was all so odd!  And the narrow passages with two stairs at every turn, and the rooms opening right in each other’s faces, so to say!  It felt queer, too, to know that we were alone in the house with only Susette and Jane to take care of us, the woman of the house to do hard work, and Gus to run errands for us.

By some means or other we did go to sleep at last, and afterwards woke up in the morning to wonder where we were.  And then came all the wonders of the new place to be discovered.  Harry had persuaded grandmamma to send over the steady old pony with us, and no sooner was breakfast over than he appeared at the door led by Gus, for Master Harry to go, as he called it, on a voyage of discovery.  I am not sure that our nurses were not rather glad to be rid of this “Turk of a boy,” as they called him; for Harry, good-natured as he was, could not lose a chance of teasing the little ones, and sometimes, a little hurting their tempers.

[Illustration:  I’M COMING!]

There was a great hollow place in the cliff close to our house, down which was the way to the beach, which we took with the least possible delay.  Then came the first delights of bathing, and when that was over, the digging in the sand and hunting for shells, while baby took his morning sleep on Susette’s lap.  By and by we went home to dinner, and after that, to hemming and sewing and reading with the nurses.  And when early tea was over, it was cool enough for a fresh walk over the hills, or away to the rocks farther off.

This was the way we spent four pleasant weeks, getting as rosy and strong as any one could wish.  Three or four times we were surprised in our morning play on the beach by the welcome sight of Uncle Hugh.  For, every now and then, he would ride over to give grandmamma some news of the children.  This was a great delight, for it was sure to mean, first of all, that there were letters from home for us all,—­those foreign sheets that Lottie loved to see, and the long crossed letters full of mamma’s love to me.  And to us four elder ones, Harry and Lottie and Alick and me, uncle’s visit always meant a glorious afternoon in a boat far out at sea.  I hardly know whether Harry or Gus delighted most in the prospect of these visits.  The pleasure simply of holding the “Capitaine’s” horse was enough to make the French boy’s eyes glisten and his teeth shine with the broadest smile.  And to Harry the delight of handling an oar or managing a sail was beyond anything delicious.

But the visit which we had all most cause to remember was the last which Uncle Hugh paid us.  He was going away to London on business—­business which would soon end in another long voyage, the news of which brought a flush of pleasure to Gus’s cheeks, soon changed to intense disappointment at the news that he must this time be left in England.