“You will be good to your mother, boys,” said Mr. Beauchamp.  He was directly appealing to Tommy, but he included the whole family in his sweeping glance.  “Don’t overpower her.—­And, Susie, you are the eldest; you must be an example.”

Susie flounced out her ridiculously short skirts with a triumphant look round.  “I am a help, aren’t I, mother?” she said.

“Sometimes, dear,” said her mother, with rather a tired smile.

“And you won’t bother about me, Christina?” he said.

“How can I help it, darling?”

She leant farther out of the window, but one hand held firmly to Amy’s slim black legs—­Amy had scrambled up on to the seat, and was pushing the packages in the rack here and there, searching for something.

“There is the guard; we are just off, I suppose.  O Dick, how I wish you were coming too!  But I will write as often as I can.—­Susie, be quiet.  I cannot hear myself speak.”

“Well, mother,” said Susie, shaking back her hair, and poking the point of her parasol between the laces of Dick’s boots, “look at the way he has laced himself up; you said yourself he was to do it tidily.  And his face is smutty already; look at him.”

“Good-bye, Dick,” said Mrs. Beauchamp.  The train was moving smoothly out of the station, and she leant out as far as she dared, to get a last look at the erect figure.—­“There, Susie, father is out of sight.  Leave the boys alone.”

Susie frowned.

“She’d better,” said Tommy, in a choked voice.

“Now you’re going to be naughty,” said Susie.—­“I know they are, mother—­they always begin like that; they’re clawing at me with their sticky fingers.  Mother, tell them not to; I didn’t say anything.”

“You are a beastly blab,” said Tommy defiantly.

“Tom, what a word!  Sit down by nurse and look out of the window.—­Susie, it is really your fault—­you are so interfering.”

“I’m not interfering,” said Susie, aggrieved.  “I’m helping you to keep them in order.”

“Well, don’t.  I would rather manage them alone.—­Don’t squabble, boys; there’s plenty of room for every one.”

“O mother—­” said Amy.

Mrs. Beauchamp still held unconsciously on to the slim black leg, but the sudden movement of the train had jerked Amy off the seat.  She clung for a moment to the rack, but her hand slipped, and she fell headlong on to the opposite seat, and there was a dull thud as her head crashed on to a little wooden box.

“It’s all right, darling,” her mother said, and she held her close in her comforting arms.

CHAPTER II.

Amy was a good little girl, and she tried very hard not to cry; but she sat pressed very close to her mother’s side, with her large blue eyes full and overflowing with tears.  Dick, who was very tender-hearted, begged her to eat his toffee, which would have been comforting; but nurse would not allow it at any price.