obliterate the unsightly record. An amused shake of the head only answered her.

"Leave it alone," he would say. "It is only a nursery legend, and does no harm—when Noel evolves another original idea it will be time to erase it." And so "Noel Ward, His Study," still sprawled in ungainly characters over the lintel.

As Waveney entered the room with rather an offended air, she saw the youthful student standing in the doorway. He was a tall, thin stripling of fifteen—but looked older, perhaps because he wore spectacles and had classical, well-cut features, and an odd trick of projecting his chin and lifting his head as though he were always on the look-out for celestial objects. But notwithstanding this eccentricity and a cracked and somewhat high-pitched voice, the heir of the Wards was certainly a goodly youth.

"Well, old Storm and Stress," he observed, with a derisive grin, as he balanced himself skilfully on his heels between the folding-doors, "so the pibroch roused you?"

"Pibroch!" returned his sister, wrathfully. "How often have I told you, you bad boy, that you are not to make this horrible din. Caterwauling is music compared to it, or even a bagpipe out of tune."

"It was my best and latest work," returned Noel, regarding the ceiling disconsolately. "A farmyard symphony with roulades and variations of the most realistic and spirited description, and would bring the house down at a Penny Reading. At present we had only reached the braying solo—but the chorus of turkeycocks, with peacock movement, would have created a sensation."

"They have," returned Mollie, stealing softly behind him and treating him to a smart box on the ears; but Noel merely pinned her hands in a firm grasp and went on with his subject: little interruptions of this sort did not disturb him in the least; he rather liked them than otherwise. Nothing pleased him better than to get a rise out of his sisters, for, whatever virtues he possessed, he certainly lacked the bump of veneration.

Dear, sweet Mollie, with her angelic face, was often addressed as "old Stick-in-the-mud," "Pegtop," or "the wobbly one," while Waveney, his special chum, the creature whom he loved best in the world next to his father, was "Storm and Stress," a singular soubriquet, evolved from her name and her sudden and sprightly movements.

"For one is nearly blown away," he would say. "There is always a breeze through the house when that girl is in it; it is like playing a scale upside down and wrong side outwards to hear her coming downstairs;" and very often he would come to his meals with his collar up, and flourishing a red silk handkerchief ostentatiously, and speak in a croaking, nasal voice, until his father asked him mildly where he had caught such a cold; and then Waveney would nudge him furiously under the table.

On the present occasion poor Mollie was kept in durance vile until Noel had finished his disquisition on his novel symphony; then he released her, and contemplated the tea-table with a fixed and glassy stare, which conveyed mute reproach.

"Noel, dear, it is a fresh loaf," she said, hastily and apprehensively, "and it is beautifully crusty, and the butter is good—a penny a pound dearer, and at the best shop."

"Where are the shrimps?" asked Noel, and he so lengthened the word that it sounded almost as terribly in Mollie's ears as Mrs. Siddons' "Give me the dagger!" for so much depends on expression, and if one is only melodramatic, even the words "shrimps" can be as sibilant and aggressive as the hissing of snakes.

"Oh, dear, how tiresome you are, Noel!" returned Mollie, quite sharply for her, for she was housekeeper, and the strain and responsibility were overwhelming at times, especially when her poor little purse was empty. "I could not afford them, really, Noel," she continued, welling into tenderness at the thought of his disappointment. "There were some nice brown ones, but I dared not get them, for I had only twopence left, so I bought watercresses instead."

"Ask a blessing, my child, and I will forgive you;" and then, much to his sister's relief, Noel subsided, and began cutting the bread, while under cover of the table-cloth, Waveney slipped sixpence into Mollie's hand, and made a movement with her lips suggestive of "to-morrow;" and Mollie nodded as she poured out the tea.

Noel had a volume of "Eugene Aram" propped up before him as he ate, but it did not engross him so utterly that he could not interpolate the conversation whenever he pleased, and it pleased him to do so very often.

Mollie was giving a graphic and heart-breaking account of the way in which she and her father had packed the precious picture, "and how it had been bumped three times while they carried it down the narrow stairs." "I quite missed the dear old thing, Wave," she went on, "and the studio looked so dull without it. Noel was so absurd; he threw an old shoe after it for good luck, and it nearly knocked father's hat off—and then he bolted indoors, and there was father looking at me so astonished, and he was not quite pleased, I could see that, so I said, 'It is not me dad, it is the other boy.'"

"Yes, and it was real mean of you," grumbled Noel; "but there, what are you to expect from a woman? Poor old padre, he will be precious tired with hauling along 'King Canute,' and it will bump all the worse going upstairs."

"Oh, Noel!" exclaimed both the girls, in a shrill crescendo of dismay. "You don't really believe that the dealers will refuse 'King Canute'?" ejaculated Mollie. "Father has worked so hard at it, and it is really his best picture."

Noel shrugged his shoulders; then he pointed his chin in an argumentative way.

"The dealers buy awful rubbish sometimes, but they won't buy this. Every kid knows how the old buffer gave his courtiers a lesson, but no one wants to be always looking on while he does it; the public hates that sort of thing, you know. I told father so, over and over again, but he would not listen. 'Why don't you try something lively and less historical?' I said to him. '"The Two Grave-diggers" in Hamlet, or "Touchstone and Audrey." We might get Corporal Marks to sit for "Touchstone"—the public would think that fetching.' But no, nothing but that solemn old Dane would suit him—the Wards are terribly obstinate. I am my father's son, and speak feelingly;" and then Noel shouldered his book and marched back to the study.

"Do you think Noel is right?" whispered Mollie. "He is very clever, for all his ridiculous nonsense, and I am not quite sure whether 'King Canute' will really interest people."

"Oh, don't ask me," returned Waveney, in an exasperated tone. "If only dear father would stick to his schools, and his drawing-classes, and not try to paint these pictures! They seem grand to us, but they are not really well done. Don't you remember Mr. Fullarton said so? We were in the back room, but we heard him plainly. 'You are too ambitious, Ward'—that was what he said; 'the public is tired of these old hackneyed subjects. Why don't you hit on something pathetic and suggestive—some fetching little incident that tells its own story?' '"Child and St. Bernard Dog," for example,' returned father, grimly, 'and write under it, "Nellie's Guardian." Would that do, Fullarton? But I suppose anything would do for pot-boilers.'"

"Oh, yes, I recollect," returned Mollie, with a long-drawn sigh. "Poor old dad! How low he seemed that day! And this evening, if——" But Waveney would not let her finish the sentence.

"Never mind that just now. It is no use crossing the bridge till you come to it; let us go upstairs and be cosy, for I have a lot I want to say to you;" and then they went up arm-in-arm—Mollie was almost a head taller than her sister—and sat down side by side on the big couch; and then Waveney began to laugh.

"Oh, Mollie, I have had such an adventure; I did not want Noel to hear it, because he would have teased me so unmercifully. Don't you recollect that horrid note-book that we found?" And then, at the