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them,” Miss Strayte replied absently, as she shook hands with Ruth. “What a lovely garden you have, Miss Farday,” she continued eagerly. “I love flowers.”
    “Don’t babble, Amelia!” Valerie broke in. “Miss Farday is waiting to show us to our rooms.”
    Ruth led the way to the wide, black oak staircase which was one of the many attractions of the old farmhouse, and Valerie followed with a strange little speculative smile playing round her mouth.
    “I think I’m going to like it here—after all,” she said slowly.
    CHAPTER FOUR
    Valerie Grenton was obviously attracted by John Travayne from the first moment she set eyes upon him, but if it was apparent to Travayne—as Ruth thought it could not fail to be—he made no sign.
    Ruth told herself that she was too busy to think of the affairs of her individual guests as Good Friday passed and the Saturday brought the remainder of her Easter house-party. Yet, very often, as she turned to some new task which lay ready for her busy hands, she wondered what John Travayne was doing out there on the cliffs, and if Valerie was his companion.
    Easter Monday morning found Ruth in the kitchen helping Mrs. Emery to provide a breakfast for sixteen people whose appetites had already been sharpened by the invigorating moorland air. Most of the guests had arrived by road, and Ruth was secretly relieved that they all appeared to be good mixers. She had been nervous of this first week-end, anxious in case she might fail to keep the interest in the holiday alive. So much depended on the people themselves, she acknowledged now, and she had been fortunate.
    “Sally,” she said to the little maid who had been engaged to help in the kitchen, “ring the first bell.”
    Sally went out eagerly to the novelty of making a great noise with the new bell, and Ruth turned to Mrs. Emery, who was studying a packet of breakfast cereal with a puzzled look on her heat-flushed face.
    “What’s the matter, Peg?” Ruth asked.
    “I still canna understand folks eatin’ the likes o’ this when there’s good porridge for their likin’,” Peg said.
    Ruth lifted the offending packet and, opening it, shook some of the crisp golden flakes into a bowl.
    “There’s no accounting for tastes, Peg!” she said gaily. “We must consider everybody, and variety at the table is half the secret of keeping guests.”
    “That’s what you read in that silly book you were studyin’,” Peg said dryly. “A lot o’ stupid ideas in there, I’d be thinking!”
    “And some quite good ones, too, Peg,” Ruth replied in defence of her book on How to manage a Modern Guest House. “Now, let me see,” she went on, “there’s orange juice in this and tomato juice in that.” She set the glass jugs on a big oak tray and peeped into a covered dish which Peg had set on the dresser. “Hullo! What have we here?” Peg looked over her shoulder at the half-dozen hard-boiled eggs in the dish—two blue, two red, and two purple.
    “I dyed them last night,” she defended their strange appearance. “Ye canna have three bairns without paste eggs to roll, can ye?”
    Ruth laughed. It was so like Peg to think of this little detail to please the three children who were staying at Conningscliff with their parents.
    “They’ll be delighted,” she said, turning to the door which led into the hall. “Can you manage now, Peg?”
    “Fine!” Mrs. Emery declared, replacing the lid above her treasures. “You run on an’ get everybody seated.”
    Ruth had wondered about individual tables at Conningscliff, and then had come to the conclusion that the long mahogany table which had always stood in the dining-room would be more appropriate, considering the effect of farm life she wished to convey. The snowy cloth and the plain, blue-banded china gleamed in the light of the huge log-fire which Will Finberry had lit early in the morning. Peg’s breakfast rolls made two pyramids at either end of the table, and the golden gleam