“There, stop your ribaldry, Austin, and get up,” said Aunt Charlotte, impatiently.  “The sooner we’re all out of this dreadful room the better.  And let me tell you that you’d be better employed in thanking God for your deliverance than in turning sacred subjects into ridicule.”

“Thanking God?  Why, not a moment ago you said it was the devil!” exclaimed Austin.  “How you do chop and change about, auntie.  You can’t possibly expect me to be orthodox when you go on contradicting yourself at such a rate.  However, if you really must go, I think I will get up.  It must be long past eight, and I want my breakfast awfully.”

The day so excitingly ushered in turned out a busy one.  As soon as he had finished his meal, Austin pounded off to invoke the immediate presence of Mr Snewin the builder, and before long there was a mighty bustle in the house.  The furniture had all to be removed from the scene of the disaster, the bed cleared of the debris, preparations made for the erection of light scaffolding for repairing the roof, and Austin himself installed, with all his books and treasures, in another bedroom overlooking a different part of the garden.  It was all a most enjoyable adventure, and even Aunt Charlotte forgot her terrors in the more practical necessities of the occasion.  Just before lunch Austin snatched a few minutes to run out and gossip with Lubin on the lawn.  Lubin listened with keen interest to the boy’s picturesque account of his experiences, and then remarked, sagely nodding his head: 

“I told you to be on the look-out, you know, Master Austin.  Magpies don’t perch on folks’ window-sills for nothing.  You’ll believe me a little quicker next time, maybe.”

For once in his life Austin could think of nothing to say in reply.  To ask Lubin to explain the connection between magpies and misadventures would have been useless; it evidently sufficed for him that such was the order of Nature, and only a magpie would have been able to clear up the mystery.  Besides, there are many such mysteries in the world.  Why do cats occasionally wash their heads behind the ear?  Clearly, to tell us that we may expect bad weather; for the bad weather invariably follows.  These are all providential arrangements intended for our personal convenience, and are not to be accounted for on any cut-and-dried scientific theory.  Lubin’s erudition was certainly very great, but there was something exasperating about it too.

So Austin went in to lunch thoughtful and dispirited, wondering why there were so many absurdities in life that he could neither elucidate nor controvert.  He decided not to say anything to Aunt Charlotte about Lubin’s magpie sciolisms, lest he should provoke a further outburst of the discussion they had held in the morning; he had had the best of that, anyhow, and did not care to compromise his victory by dragging in extraneous considerations in which he did not feel sure of his ground.  Aunt Charlotte, on her side,