While Robina was proportionably exalted by her preferment, and took
to teasing every one in the house to hear her spelling and her
tables, that she might not fulfil Edgar's prediction by going down to
the bottom of the baby-class; and up and down the stairs she ran,
chanting in a sing-song measure--


'Twenty pence are one and eightpence,
Thirty pence are two and sixpence,'


and so on, till her father said, smiling, 'Compensations again,
Mother: the less you teach them the more they are willing to learn.
The mother shook her head, and said the theory was more comfortable
than safe, and that she did not find Lancelot an instance of it.

But there was a general sense of having earned the holiday, when the
grocery van came to the door, on a morning of glorious sunshine.
Edgar and Alda, true to their promise, had walked on so far ahead as
to avoid being seen in the town in connection with it; and Fulbert
had started with them to exhale his impatience, but then had turned
back half-way, that he might not lose the delicious spectacle of the
packing of the vehicle. A grand pack it was: first, the precious
hamper; then a long sofa cushion, laid along the bottom; then
Geraldine lifted in by Sibby and Felix, and folded up with shawls,
and propped with cushions by Mamma, whose imagination foresaw more
shaking than did the more youthful anticipation; then Mamma herself,
not with 'little baby,' but with Angela on her lap, and Angela's feet
in all manner of unexpected places; then a roll of umbrellas and