bars of their chairs, and have one cup, and talk the same sort of
stuff every time."

Selina sniffed disdainfully. "You don't know anything about it,"
she said. "In society you have to call on each other. It's the

proper thing to do."
"Pooh! YOU'RE not in society," said Edward, politely; "and,

what's more, you never will be."
"Yes, I shall, some day," retorted Selina; "but I shan't ask you

to come and see me, so there!"
"Wouldn't come if you did," growled Edward.

"Well, you won't get the chance," rejoined our sister, claiming
her right of the last word. There was no heat about these little

amenities, which made up--as we understood it--the art of polite
conversation.

"I don 't like society people," put in Harold from the sofa,
where he was sprawling at full length,--a sight the daylight

hours would have blushed to witness. "There were some of 'em
here this afternoon, when you two had gone off to the station.

Oh, and I found a dead mouse on the lawn, and I wanted to skin
it, but I wasn't sure I knew how, by myself; and they came out

into the garden and patted my head,--I wish people wouldn't do
that,--and one of 'em asked me to pick her a flower. Don't know

why she couldn't pick it herself; but I said, `All right, I
will if you'll hold my mouse.' But she screamed, and threw it

away; and Augustus (the cat) got it, and ran away with it. I
believe it was really his mouse all the time, 'cos he'd been

looking about as if he had lost something, so I wasn't angry with
HIM; but what did SHE want to throw away my mouse for?"

"You have to be careful with mice," reflected Edward; "they're
such slippery things. Do you remember we were playing with a

dead mouse once on the piano, and the mouse was Robinson Crusoe,
and the piano was the island, and somehow Crusoe slipped down

inside the island, into its works, and we couldn't get him out,
though we tried rakes and all sorts of things, till the tuner

came. And that wasn't till a week after, and then--"
Here Charlotte, who had been nodding solemnly, fell over into the

fender; and we realised that the wind had dropped at last, and
the house was lapped in a great stillness. Our vacant beds

seemed to be calling to us imperiously; and we were all glad when
Edward gave the signal for retreat. At the top of the staircase

Harold unexpectedly turned mutinous, insisting on his right
to slide down the banisters in a free country. Circumstances did

not allow of argument; I suggested frog's-marching instead, and
frog's-marched he accordingly was, the procession passing

solemnly across the moonlit Blue Room, with Harold horizontal and
limply submissive. Snug in bed at last, I was just slipping off

into slumber when I heard Edward explode, with chuckle and snort.
"By Jove!" he said; "I forgot all about it. The new tutor's

sleeping in the Blue Room!"
"Lucky he didn't wake up and catch us," I grunted, drowsily; and

both of us, without another thought on the matter, sank into
well-earned repose.

Next morning we came down to breakfast braced to grapple with
fresh adversity, but were surprised to find our garrulous friend

of the previous day--he was late in making his appearance--
strangely silent and (apparently) preoccupied. Having polished

off our porridge, we ran out to feed the rabbits, explaining to
them that a beast of a tutor would prevent their enjoying so much

of our society as formerly.
On returning to the house at the fated hour appointed for

study, we were thunderstruck to see the station-cart disappearing
down the drive, freighted with our new acquaintance. Aunt Eliza

was brutally uncommunicative; but she was overheard to remark
casually that she thought the man must be a lunatic. In this

theory we were only too ready to concur, dismissing thereafter
the whole matter from our minds.

Some weeks later it happened that Uncle Thomas, while paying us a
flying visit, produced from his pocket a copy of the latest

weekly, Psyche: a Journal of the Unseen; and proceeded
laborously to rid himself of much incomprehensible humour,

apparently at our expense. We bore it patiently, with the forced
grin demanded by convention, anxious to get at the source of

inspiration, which it presently appeared lay in a paragraph
circumstantially describing our modest and humdrum habitation.

"Case III.," it began. "The following particulars were
communicated by a young member of the Society, of undoubted

probity and earnestness, and are a chronicle of actual and recent
experience." A fairly accuratedescription of the house

followed, with details that were unmistakable; but to this
there succeeded a flood of meaningless drivel about apparitions,

nightly visitants, and the like, writ in a manner betokening a
disordered mind, coupled with a feebleimagination. The fellow

was not even original. All the old material was there,--the
storm at night, the hauntedchamber, the white lady, the murder

re-enacted, and so on,--already worn threadbare in many a
Christmas Number. No one was able to make head or tail of the

stuff, or of its connexion with our quiet mansion; and yet
Edward, who had always suspected the man, persisted in

maintaining that our tutor of a brief span was, somehow or other,
at the bottom of it.

A FALLING OUT
Harold told me the main facts of this episode some time later,--

in bits, and with reluctance. It was not a recollection he cared
to talk about. The crude blank misery of a moment is apt to

leave a dull bruise which is slow to depart, if it ever does so
entirely; and Harold confesses to a twinge or two, still, at

times, like the veteran who brings home a bullet inside him from
martial plains over sea.

He knew he was a brute the moment he had done it; Selina had not
meant to worry, only to comfort and assist. But his soul was one

raw sore within him, when he found himself shut up in the
schoolroom after hours, merely for insisting that 7 times 7

amounted to 47. The injustice of it seemed so flagrant. Why not
47 as much as 49? One number was no prettier than the other to

look at, and it was evidently only a matter of arbitrary taste
and preference, and, anyhow, it had always been 47 to him, and

would be to the end of time. So when Selina came in out of
the sun, leaving the Trappers or the Far West behind her, and

putting off the glory of being an Apache squaw in order to hear
him his tables and win his release, Harold turned on her

venomously, rejected her kindly overtures, and ever drove his
elbow into her sympathetic ribs, in his determination to be left

alone in the glory of sulks. The fit passed directly, his eyes
were opened, and his soul sat in the dust as he sorrowfully began

to cast about for some atonement heroic enough to salve the
wrong.

Of course poor Selina looked for no sacrifice nor heroics
whatever: she didn't even want him to say he was sorry. If he

would only make it up, she would have done the apologising part
herself. But that was not a boy's way. Something solid, Harold

felt, was due from him; and until that was achieved, making-up
must not be thought of, in order that the final effect might not

be spoilt. Accordingly, when his release came, and poor Selina
hung about, trying to catch his eye, Harold, possessed by the

demon of a distorted motive, avoided her steadily--though he was
bleeding inwardly at every minute of delay--and came to me

instead. Needless to say, I approved his plan highly; it
was so much more high-toned than just going and making-up tamely,

which any one could do; and a girl who had been jobbed in the
ribs by a hostile elbow could not be expected for a moment to