the whole—

"Oh! no, Phil," said Gertrude. "Not the very first night the girls are here; it will take them a day or two to get used to camp ways, Margaret at least; and we want to do something all together, something that Colonel Ferrers will like, too. I think—"

"Sing it! sing it!" cried Gerald. "The song upraise, Tintinnabula! no escape! 'Trimmering' is still left you."

"Is there only one vowel?" demanded Bell, laughing. "I refuse to be fettered. Wait a second!—now I have it.

"I cannot!" said Gertrude. "You know I cannot, Bell. Besides, there aren't any more rhymes."

"Oh!" cried Gerald, "you know what you are telling, and you know what happens to people who tell them. Perpend, Tootsina!

"Gracious!" said Gertrude. "Don't you suppose I would make rhymes if I could? It's really a dreadful thing to be the only prose member of a large family. But Jack comforts me; you can't make them either, can you, Jack?"

"Not to save my life!" said Jack. "Never could see how they do it."

"But you can set them to music!" said Gertrude. "That is the delightful thing about you."

"And you can illustrate them! That is one of the many delightful things about you!" said Jack, with a low bow.

"In canoes!" replied the others in chorus.

"'Tis well! Any special stunts in the way of arrangement?"

"Oh!" said Jack, "in plain prose—Bell, will you come with me? It's our turn to get supper, isn't it? and I have an idea—just a little one—which we can talk over while we are getting it."

"False construction!" said Bell. "You cannot dry squeals."

"They were tearful ones!" Gerald protested. "It was the tears I would have dried. Tears, idle tears, I know not whence they come; tears from the depth of some despairing fiddler."

"Suppose you dry up!" said Jack, dipping Gerald's head lightly in the water.

"No ducking between swims!" proclaimed Phil. "Law of the Medes and Persians!"

"Besides, it is time to be making the fire!" said Bell, rising. "Leave him to his conscience, Jack, and come along!"

"Yes, leave me to me conscience!" said Gerald.

"Jerry, what has got into you?" asked Gertrude, a few minutes later, when Phil had followed the others to the house, leaving the two Reds, as their mother called them, together. "Has the rhyming spider bitten you? you are really wild!"

"Nice little sister!" said Gerald, rolling over, and resting his head on Gertrude's knee. "Nice little red-haired, cream-colored, comfortable sister! If I were as good-looking as you, Toots, who knows? As it is—but still I am happy, my child, happy! I say! Toots!"

"Yes, Jerry!"

"What do you think of her?"

"Oh, Jerry, she is a darling!"

"Dixisti!" cried Gerald. "Thou hast spoken."

CHAPTER III.

AUF DAS WASSER ZU SINGEN

"Harry Monmouth!" said Colonel Ferrers. "This is pleasant. Merryweather, you are a lucky dog!" As he spoke, he looked around him, and repeated, "A lucky dog, sir!"

The horn had just blown for supper, three long blasts, and already the campers were in their places at the long table, with its shining white cover. Mr. and Mrs. Merryweather, their six children, Bell, Gertrude, and Kitty, Gerald, Philip, and Willy, the two Montforts, with the Colonel and his nephew, made a party of twelve, and filled the table comfortably, though there was still room for more. The room was a long one, with a vast open fireplace stretching half across one side. At one end were rows of book-shelves, filled to overflowing; at the other, the walls were adorned with models for boats, sketches in water-color and pen and ink, birds' nests, curious fungi, and all manner of odds and ends. It was certainly a cheerful room, and so Miles Merryweather thought, as his eyes followed the Colonel's.

"We like it!" he said, simply. "It suits us, the place and the life. It's good for young and old both, to get away from hurry and bustle, and live for a time the natural life."

"Nature, sir!" said the Colonel. "Nature! that's it; nothing like it! When I was a lad, young men were sent abroad, after their school or college course; the grand tour, Paris, Vienna, that sort of thing: very good thing in its way, too, monstrous good thing. But before he sees the world, sir, a lad should know how to live, as you say, the natural life. Ought to know what a tree is when he sees it; upon my soul, he ought. Now my milksop—best fellow in the world, I give you my word, except that little fellow at home there—well, sir! when he came to me, he didn't know the difference between an oak and an elm, give you my word he didn't. Remember one day—he heard me giving directions to Giuseppe about cutting some ashes—clump of them in the field below the house, needed thinning out—and he wanted to know how ashes could be cut; thought I meant those in the fireplace, sir. Monstrous! Well, I taught him a little, and you and your young folks have taught him a great deal. H'm! I don't know that he is now more disgracefully ignorant than nine-tenths of the young men of his age. Set of noodles! I'll tell you what, Merryweather! You ought to have a kind of summer school here: get other boys, a dozen, two dozen; teach 'em to see with their eyes, and all the rest of it. I knew a boy once who thought a bat was a bird, give you my word I did. And another who thought oysters grew on bushes. Get up a school, sir, and I'll come myself, and be a boy again."

"That is a great inducement," said Mr. Merryweather,