“None more than usual,” answers Algy, sarcastically, lifting his pretty, disdainful nose out of his novel.  “If, as the Eton Latin Grammar says, ira is a brevis furor, you will agree with me that he is pretty often out of his mind, in fact, a good deal oftener than he is in it.”

“No, but really?”

“Of course not.  What do you mean?”

“Put down all your books!” say I, impressively.  “Listen attentively.  Bobby, stop see-sawing that chair, it makes me feel deadly sick.  Ah! my young friend, you will rue the day when you kept me sitting on the top of that wall—­”

I break off.

“Go on! go on!” in five different voices of impatience.

“Well, then, father has sent a message by mother to the effect that I am to dine with them to-night—­I, if you please—­I!—­you must own” (lengthening my neck as I speak, and throwing up my untidy flax head) “that sweet Nancies are looking up in the world.”

A silence of stupefaction falls on the assembly.  After a pause—­

“YOU?”

“Yes, I!”

“And how do you account for it?”

“I believe,” reply I, simpering, “that our future benefac—­, no!  I really must give up calling him that, or I shall come out with it to his face, as Bobby did last night.  Well, then, Sir Roger asked me why I did not appear yesterday.  I suppose he thought that I looked so very grown up, that they must be keeping me in pinafores by force.”

Algy has risen.  He is coming toward me.  He has pulled me off my chair.  He has taken me by the shoulders, and is turning me round to face the others.

“Allow me!” he says, bowing, and making me bow, too, “to introduce you to the future legatee!—­Barbara, my child, you and I are nowhere.  This depraved old man has clearly no feeling for symmetry of form or face; a long career of Begums has utterly vitiated his taste.  To-morrow he will probably be clamoring for Tou Tou’s company.”

“Brat!” says Barbara, laughing, “where has the analogy between me and the man who pulled up the window in the train for the old woman gone to?”

“Mother said I was to look as nice as I could,” say I, casting a rueful glance at the tea-board, at the large plum loaf, at the preparations for temperate conviviality.  I have sat down on the threadbare blue-and-red hearth-rug, and am shading my face with a pair of cold pink hands, from the clear, quick blaze.  “What am I to wear?” I say, gloomily.  “None of my frocks are ironed, and there is no time now.  I shall look as if I came out of the dirty clothes-basket!  Barbara, dear, will you lend me your blue sash?  Last time I wore mine the Brat upset the gum-bottle over my ends.”

“Let us each have the melancholy pleasure of contributing something toward the decking of our victim,” says Algy, with a grin; “have my mess-jacket!”

“Have as many beads as you can about you,” puts in Bobby.  “Begums always have plenty of beads.”