"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?"
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.
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.