big things—that is, except on board ship, when, of course, I had the sea to look at, which seemed to go on for ever and ever. So I was not excited about Aunt Penelope's garden. Father's face continued to be very red. He held my hand and took me up the neatly-kept gravel walk, and pushed a very brightly-polished brass button, which was instantly answered by a neat-looking boy, with a perfectly round face, in buttons.

"Is Miss Despard in?" asked father. And then a lady in spectacles came out of a room at one side of a narrow hall, and father said:

"Hallo, Penelope! It is years since we met, and, Penelope, this is Heather. Heather, my darling, here is your Aunt Penelope."

"I hope you are a good child and do what you are told always," said Aunt Penelope.

She spoke in a very prim voice, and stooping down, kissed me, hurting my face as she did so with the rim of her spectacles. I disliked her on the spot and told her so with the frank eyes of a child, although I was not quite rude enough to utter any words by my lips.

"Well, Gordon," said my aunt, "you were a little late, and I was beginning to fear that you had missed your train. We shall just have time to arrange everything before you return to Southampton."

"I am going to London to-night," said father.

"Well, well, it really doesn't matter to me. Child, don't stare."

I looked away at once. There was a parrot in a cage, and the parrot said, in his shrill voice at that moment: "Stop knocking at the door."

I burst into a peal of laughter and ran towards him. I was about to approach his cage with my finger, when Aunt Penelope said:

"He bites."

I did not want him to bite my finger, for his beak was so sharp. So I said:

"Please, Aunt Penelope, are you aunt also to Anastasia?"

"I have never heard of her," said Aunt Penelope. "Little girls should be seen and not heard."

At that moment the parrot again shouted out, "Stop knocking at the door," and I was so amused by him that I did not mind Aunt Penelope. After all, nothing much mattered, for I would be going to London immediately with Daddy.

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