The word brought back memories of last summer holidays and everyone groaned; they thought of the white house with the beautiful tangled garden--late roses, asters, marigold, sweet mignonette, and feathery asparagus--of the wilderness which someone had once meant to make into an orchard, but which was now, as Father said, 'five acres of thistles haunted by the ghosts of baby cherry-trees'.

They thought of the view across the valley, where the lime-kilns looked like Aladdin's palaces in the sunshine, and they thought of their own sandpit, with its fringe of yellowy grasses and pale-stringy-stalked wild flowers, and the little holes in the cliff that were the little sand-martins' little front doors.

And they thought of the free fresh air smelling of thyme and sweetbriar, and the scent of the wood-smoke from the cottages in the lane--and they looked round old Nurse's stuffy parlour, and Jane said-- 'Oh, how different it all is!' It was.

Old Nurse had been in the habit of letting lodgings, till Father gave her the children to take care of.

And her rooms were furnished 'for letting'.