ashamed.

"How often am I to tell you I hate mugging?" he said gruffly. "If you go on like this, I won't tell you."

"I beg your pardon," Poppet said very humbly; "really, I won't again, Bunty. Do go on."

"Well, after that, I went round the side of the school—you know that path, near the master's windows. Well, I'd nothing much to do, and the bell hadn't gone, and I was just chucking my cricket ball up and down; there was a tree, and I tried to make it go up in a straight line just as high, and the next minute I heard a crash, and it had gone through Mr. Hollington's window."

"Good gracious!" Poppet said, with widening eyes; then she gave a little joyful jump. "I've got thirteen shillings, Bunty, from the pound Mr. Hassal gave me; I'll give it to you to get it mended with. Oh, it won't be such a very bad row; you can 'splain it all to Mr. Hollington."

"That's not all," Bunty said. "Thirteen shillings! You might as well say ha'pennies. I stood there for a bit and no one came, and at last I went in and looked about, and what do you think?—no one had heard!"

"Oh!" breathed Poppet. She scented the old trouble again.

"But you see it was such an awful crash. I knew it was more than the window. And every one was out in the playground,—even Mr. Burnham had just gone out again for something, and Mr. Hollington had gone home early. So I first went quietly upstairs, and no one was about, so I went into his room to get the ball, because my name was on it. And there were two glass cases on top of one another under the window with eggs and specimens and things in, and they were all smashed."

Poppet drew a long breath that ended in a whistle. She was wishing she had not bought that set of gardening tools that cost six shillings, and that shillingsworth of burnt almonds—perhaps a sovereign——

"It wasn't school-time," Bunty was whispering now, "and no one had seen—not a soul, Poppet. Poppet, it was an accident; why should I go and tell of myself? Why, I might have been expelled; and think what the governor would say. So——"

"Yes," said Poppet steadily, "go on, Bunty."

He had paused, and was digging up the earth with his broken pocket-knife. "So—go on."

"So, when we were all in afternoon school, Mr. Burnham came in and asked who did it."

"Yes, Bunty—dear." A red colour had crept up into the little girl's cheeks, her eyes were full of painful anxiety. "You said you had, Bunty—didn't you, Bunty dear? Oh, Bunty, of course you said you had."

"No, I didn't," burst out her brother. "How could I after that, you idiot you? What is the good telling you things? Why I didn't know what would have happened. When he asked us separately I just said 'No' in a hurry, and then I couldn't say 'Yes' after, could I?"

Again Poppet was silent, again there was the look of amaze and grief in her wide, clear eyes. Bunty pulled his old cap over his face again—he hated himself, and most of all he hated to meet the honest, sorrowful eyes of his little sister.

"Couldn't you tell now, Bunty?" she said softly. "Go to-night—I'll come with you to the gate—oh, do, Bunty dear. Mr. Burnham is not vewy howid perhaps, and canings don't hurt vewy much—let's go to-night, and by to-morrow it'll all be over."

"It's no good." A sob came from under the cap. "Oh, Poppet, it'll be awful to-morrow! Oh, Poppet! Some one had seen, after all. Just as I left school Hawkins came up to me. He hadn't been there when Burnham asked us, and didn't hear anything till after school, and he said he saw me coming out of Hollington's room, and creeping down the passage with a cricket ball in my hand, and he went in to report it to Burnham just as I came home, to pay me out for getting him a swishing."

Poppet was crying, though she hardly knew it. Such a terrible scrape, and such a lie at the back of it—what could be the end of it?

"Oh, Bunty!" she said, and put her face right down in the long grass. The earth and the tears got mixed, and smirched the clearness of her skin—there was a wet, black smudge all down her poor little nose.

"Poppet!" cried Meg's voice, preceding her down the path in the dusk. "Are you really sitting on the grass again when I've told you so often how wet the dew makes it? John, how can you let her, when you know how she coughs! Go to bed at once, Poppet, it's after eight; and you haven't touched your home-lessons, John—really it's one person's work to look after you—and where is that coat with the buttons off?"

"On my bed," "John" said sulkily.

"I wish you'd hang it up—what's the use of pegs? Poppet, go in when I tell you—don't be naughty. Now, John, go and start your lessons. You'd better do them in your bedroom, you make such a litter downstairs."

Meg turned to go back, Poppet's reluctant hand held fast.

"Can't I stay five minutes, please, Meg?" the little girl said, looking up beseechingly.

Even in the fading light Meg saw the sweet brimming eyes and quivering little lips.

"John!" she said angrily, "you've been bullying the poor little thing again; I simply won't have it—I shall speak to father."

"Oh, shut up!" said John; and he moved away wearily up to the house.

CHAPTER III.

A PASSAGE AT ARMS.

"Oh the day when thou goest a-wooing,

Philip, my king."

Meg was a little "put out," as it is popularly called, this evening,—she was not generally so short with the young ones. The good fit had worn away during the endless process of darning, and she had jumped up at last, stuffed all the work into the gaping stocking-bag, and said to herself that eldest sisters were mistaken and wrongful institutions.

But that did not give Baby Essie her tea, nor yet put her lively little ladyship to bed; and since Esther was out, there was no one else to undertake it.

And when that was done Pip came in and asked her in his off-hand manner to "just put a stitch in that football blazer."

The stitch meant a hundred or two, for it was slit from top to bottom.

And then Esther came home—a quieter Esther, an Esther of less brilliant colouring than you used to know, for there are not many "fast colours" beneath Australian skies—and with her the Captain, grown more short-tempered with the lapse of years, and an income that did not grow with his family. And again it was "Meg."

The seltzogene was empty. The Captain asked some one to tell him what was the use of having a grown-up daughter—he could not answer the