“Mrs. Walker has just been saying that she cannot bear carving, and pictures of dead things,” observed Barbara.  “So, Cray, she will think you right to despise those your brother buys.  And, Johnnie, she wishes to know about our pictures.”

“And those great sentences too,” added Emily.  “What do they mean?”

“The big picture is Dover,” said little Jamie, “and that Britannia sitting on the cliff, they cut out of Punch and stuck on.  You see she has a boot in her hand.  It belongs to our Sham memory that father made for us.”

“It’s nearly the same as what Feinangle invented,” Johnnie explained.  “The vowels do not count, but all the consonants stand for figures.  Miss Crampton used to make the kids so miserable.  She would have them learn dates, and they could not remember them.”

“Even Barbara used to cry over the dates,” whispered Janie.

“You needn’t have told that,” said Barbara sharply.

“But at first we altered the letters so many times, that father said he would not help us, unless we made a decree that they should stay as they were for ever,” said Gladys.  “Johnnie had stolen the letter I, and made it stand for one.  So it does still, though it is a vowel.  Janie has a form of our plan.  Hand it up, Janie.”

Janie accordingly produced a little bag, and unfolded a paper of which this is a copy:—­

JANIE MORTIMER Fecit This.

1            2            3
I.T.          N.B.          M.Y.

4            5            6
R.Q.         C.J.V.         D.S.

7            8            9
K.G.          H.P.          F.L.

Ought
W.X.Z.

A & E & O & U dont count.  You’re to make
up the sentence with them.

“The rule is,” said Gladys, “that you make a sentence of words beginning with anyone of those letters that stand for the figures you want to remember.  Miss Crampton wanted us to know the dates of all Wellington’s battles; of course we couldn’t; we do now, though.  You see Britannia’s scroll has on it, ‘I’ll put on Wellington boots,’ that means 1802.  So we know, to begin with, that till after she put on Wellington boots, we need not trouble ourselves to remember anything particular about him.”

“There’s a portrait of Lord Palmerston,” whispered Crayshaw, “he has a map of Belgium pasted on his breast.  He says, ‘I, Pam, managed this."’

“Yes, that means the date of the independence of Belgium,” said Gladys.  “Johnnie made it, but father says it is not quite fair.”

“The best ones,” Johnnie explained, “ought not to have any extra word, and should tell you what they mean themselves.  ‘I hear navvies coming,’ is good—­it means the making of the first railway.  Here are four not so good:—­Magna Charta—­’The Barons extorted this Charter,’ 1215.  The Reformation—­’They came out of you, Rome,’ 1534.  Discovery of America—­’In re a famous navigator,’ 1492.  And Waterloo—­Bonaparte says it—­’Isle perfide tu as vaincu,’ 1815.”