“If you were a dutiful daughter, you would never have engaged in such business in my house without my knowledge and consent,” retorted her father, “and I’ll have no more of it, let me tell you, Madams Conly and Johnson; no aiding or abetting of these midnight raiders.”

Then turning to a servant he ordered her to “take the hideous things into the yard and make a bonfire of them.”

“No, no!” cried Enna.  “Papa, do you understand that you are ordering the destruction of other men’s property?”

“It makes no difference,” he answered coolly, “they are forfeit by having been brought surreptitiously into my house.  Carry them out, Fanny, do you hear? carry them out and burn them.”

“And pray, sir, what am I to say to the owners when they claim their property?” asked Enna with flashing eyes.

“Refer them to me,” replied her father leaving the room to see that his orders were duly executed.

Calhoun and Arthur had already slipped away.  Dick was about to follow, but his mother again seized him by the arm, this time shaking him violently; she must have some one on whom to vent the rage that was consuming her.

“You—­you bad, troublesome, wicked boy!  I could shake the very life out of you!” she hissed through her shut teeth, suiting the action to the word.  “A pretty mess you’ve made of it, you and Walter.  Your birthday coming next week too; there’ll be no presents from Ion for you, you may rest assured.  I hoped Mr. Travilla would send you each a handsome suit, as he did last year; but of course you’ll get nothing now.”

“Well, I don’t care,” muttered Dick, “it’s your fault for making the ugly things.”  And freeing himself by a sudden jerk, he darted from the room.

Children and servants had trooped after Mr. Dinsmore to witness the conflagration, and Dick’s sudden exit left the ladies sole occupants of the apartment.

“I declare it’s too bad! too provoking for endurance!” exclaimed Enna, bursting into a flood of angry tears.

“What’s the use of taking it so hard?” returned her sister.

“You’re a perfect iceberg,” retorted Enna.

“That accounts for my not crying over our misfortune, I presume; my tears being all frozen up,” returned Mrs. Conly with an exasperating smile.  “Well there is comfort in all things:  we may now congratulate ourselves that Foster and Boyd did not wait for these but supplied themselves elsewhere.”

There was a difference of two years in the ages of Dick Percival and Walter Conly, but they were born on the same day of the same month, and their birthday would occur in less than a week.

“I say, Wal, what precious fools we’ve been,” remarked Dick as the two were preparing to retire that night; “why didn’t we remember how near it was to our birthday?  Of course, as mother says, there’ll be no presents from Ion this time.”

“No, and I wish I’d never seen the hateful things,” grumbled Walter, “but there’s no use crying over spilt milk.”