Troublesome Comforts | Page 9

cliff she turned
and flew over the sands.
"Take off your shoes and stockings," shouted the twins; "us both
always do." And Susie, without a thought, unlaced her boots, and flung
them hither and thither, never stopping to look behind her or to be sure
that they were safe. The water was quite warm and the sea was sapphire
blue. It was a very low tide, and the rocks stretched away to a long, low
island, crowned with grass, where a few nimble goats perched on
unlikely crags. From rock to rock flew Susie's active feet, but Dot was
always ahead; and so, slipping, splashing, torn by the rocks, drenched
with the warm spray, Susie revelled in a long hour of liberty. She was
wild with excitement, eager to come again, full of reckless promises.
"We'll go as far as the island another day," said Dot, "but we have to
choose a low tide. Aren't you glad now that you didn't go home and
play like a baby?"
Susie was hastily rubbing the sand out of her toes and hunting for her
stockings. Her feet were very cold, and her fingers seemed thumbs. She
did not answer Dot. She did not feel quite sure what to say; things
always looked so different before and after, and what nurse had said
about a wearing time stuck in her mind.
"Well, aren't you?" said Dot impatiently.
"No," said Susie bluntly.
She stopped to lace Tom's boots, and then looked up with a face that

had grown suddenly red.
"I can't help it," she said desperately, "but I never am glad afterwards."
She went on lacing laboriously, whilst Tom lay on his face kicking and
plunging about. Dot looked at her curiously.
"But you wanted to come on the rocks?" she said.
"Oh yes," said Susie. "I shall always want to come, but I shall be sorry
afterwards. I think I ought to warn you because I am like that. I can't
help it. It is silly of nurse," she went on, as she tied the lace in a
draggled knot. "Why shouldn't we play with you? I feel _perfectly
certain_--" She seemed to remember using those words before on an
unfortunate occasion, so she hastily changed them. "I am quite sure that
you are a very good companion. Me and Tom couldn't learn any harm
from you."
She was persuading herself, not the twins, but it was a twin who
answered.
"We can have lots of fun," said Dot, "and no one will know. The first
chance we will cut over the rocks to the town and buy some sweets."
"Generally I have to look after the little ones," said Susie.
"Well, no one would eat them if they stayed here alone till you came
back, would they, stupid?"
"No," said Susie, rather shortly.
She was not quite sure that she liked being called "stupid."
* * * * *
"I can't think how all this sand has got into your stockings," said nurse.
"I should hope you didn't paddle after I left you, against my orders!"
There was silence, and in another moment Susie would have told the

truth, but before the words came faltering out nurse spoke again.
"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 afterwards, and how uncomfortable her conscience was at night.
"I really won't go again," she said to herself time after time; and yet the
first sight of the twins splashing round the rocks scattered all her good
resolutions to the winds.