“Oh, meus oculus!” cried Gerald.  “Do you remember how that kettle looked, with a fringe of hair all around it?  Half his hyacinth bed on one fell kettle!  He ought to have sung a ‘Lock-aber no more!’”

“And we ought to have sung ‘Philly, put the kettle on!’” cried Gertrude.

“Toots, don’t exhaust your brain!” said Gerald, gravely.  “You may need it some time; there is no knowing.  No knowing, but much nosing!” he added.  “Could you move the principal part of your person, my child?  It casts such a deep shadow that I cannot see myself think.”

“Will some one please tell me what is the matter with Gertrude’s nose?” asked Hildegarde, innocently.  “You are always talking about it; it seems to me a very good nose indeed.”

“Dear Hilda!” exclaimed Gertrude; “what a nice girl you are!”

“That is just the point, Miss Hilda,” said Gerald.  “It is an excellent nose.  Take it as a nose, it has no equal in the country, we have been assured.  If there is one thing this family is proud of, it is Gertrude’s nose.  We may not be clever, or rich, or beautiful, but we can always fall back on the nose; there’s plenty of room on it for the whole family.”

“Why,” put in Phil, “the Pater has been offered a dollar a pound for that nose, and he wouldn’t look at it.”

“He couldn’t see it,” said Bell; “the nose was in the way.”

“Why, one day we had been in bathing,” said Phil, “and when we came back, Toots hung her nose out of the window to dry, and went to sleep and forgot it; and will you believe it? a fellow came along and climbed right up it, just like ’Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,’ you know.  Ah!  Oh, I say!”

At this outrage, Gertrude rose, and fell upon her brother tooth and nail.  She was a powerful child, and at the shock of her onset, the seat of Phil’s chair gave way, and he “sat through” like little Silver-hair, and came suddenly to the floor, his head and legs sticking up helplessly through the empty frame.  The young people were so overcome with laughter that no one could help him; but Roger, who had been hidden in a convenient corner with an absorbing monograph on trilobites that had just arrived by mail, came forward and pulled his brother out.

“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Merryweather, looking up.  “Philip, my dear, it is strange that none of you can remember not to sit in that chair.”

“What is the matter with the chair?” inquired Mr. Merryweather.

“The seat has been loose for a long time,” said his wife.  “It always comes down when any one sits in it.”

“And could it not be mended?”