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The Anstruther children were the terror of Whitcliffe. Their mother said that they had excellent hearts, and this was very possibly true, but it was also painfully evident that they had no manners, and a very small amount of conscience. Add to this the possession of tremendous animal spirits, splendid lungs, and most inventive brains, and it will be seen that the life of a conscientious elder sister, who held pronounced views of her own on the subject of education, was not likely to be an easy one among them. Of all those who tried to govern them Cecil was perhaps the least successful, for she was gentle, methodical, and somewhat old-maidish in her ways, and each of these tendencies militated strongly against her. She got on very well with Mrs Anstruther (indeed, no one who knew that stout, untidy little lady, with her blue-grey eyes and her soft, drawling brogue, could do otherwise), and loved her almost as much as if she had been her own mother, but the children did not take to her. Even now, after a morning spent in wild efforts to clear away the things they left about, undo the mischief they had done, and efface generally the traces of their baleful existence, she could not eat her dinner in peace. Patsy was spilling his pudding on the carpet, Loey feeding the cat from his plate, and when Cecil leaned across the table to rescue Eily’s glass of water from imminent peril of destruction, Terry seized the opportunity of pulling out all her hair-pins. And all this time Fitz was roaring out the paragraph from the ‘Argus’ in his loudest tones.