"But there! I can trust you, with all your troublesome ways," she said.

And this time Susie _could not_ speak.




CHAPTER VII.


As time went on it grew so perilously easy to be deceitful! No one
thought of doubting them--no one thought of asking what they did when
they were left alone.

Day after day, as nurse's toiling figure disappeared up the wooden steps
on to the cliff, Dash and Dot burst round the corner of the rocks, and
almost without a word spoken, Susie's shoes and stockings were flung to
the winds, and she was scampering at headlong speed from pool to pool,
with Tom at her heels--like a wild creature, and in a condition that
would have fairly horrified poor nurse, who held that all well-conducted
young ladies, like the Queen of Spain, should have no visible legs!

Really, in her heart, Susie did not like the twins so very much. They
were wild and unkempt, and very boisterous; their twinkling black eyes
radiated mischief, but it was the sort of mischief that bewildered Susie
and rather frightened her. Nurse puzzled over her mangled stockings and
the hideous rents in her skirts, and Mrs. Beauchamp's patient fingers
grew stiff with darning; but whilst Susie flew about the rocks, careless
and dishevelled, she always forgot how sorry she was going to be