from the table. "And it's getting chilly—the evenings aren't like the middle of the day—you mustn't stand at the windows any more. It's[Pg 15] draughty, and it would never do for you to be getting stiff necks or swollen glands or anything like that on the top of all there's been."

[Pg 15]

The two came slowly to the tea-table, but their looks were not very amiable.

"You're so rude," said Dolly to her brother, "contradicting like that. I never saw anybody so persisting."

"How can you help persisting when you know you're right?" said Max. "I can't tell stories to please you."

But I must say his tone was more good-natured than Dolly's.

"Well," said she, "can I tell stories to please you? I know there are thirteen."

"And I know there are only twelve," retorted Max, more doggedly.

After that they did not speak to each other all through tea-time. Nurse, who often complained of the chatter-chatter "going through her head," should have been pleased at the unusual quiet, but somehow she wasn't. She had a kind heart, and she did not like to see the little couple looking gloomy and cross.

"Come, cheer up, my dears," she said, "what does it matter? Twelve or thirteen, though I don't know what it is you were talking about—call it twelve-and-a-half and split the difference, won't that settle it?"

It was rather difficult not to smile at this suggestion—the idea of chopping one of the poor little pigs in two to settle their dispute was too absurd. But Dolly pinched up her lips; she wasn't going to give in, and[Pg 16] smiling would have been a sort of beginning of giving in, you see. And Max, to save himself from any weakness of the kind, started whistling, which nurse promptly put a stop to, telling him that whistling at table was not "manners" at all!

[Pg 16]

This did not increase Master Max's good temper, especially as Dolly looked very virtuous, and as if her "manners" could never call for any reproof. And a quarter-of-an-hour or so later, when mamma came up to pay them a little visit, it was very plain to her that there was a screw, and rather a big screw, loose somewhere in the nursery machinery. For Max was sitting in one corner pretending to read, and Dolly was sitting in another corner—the two 

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