"'Coo,' said the turtle dove,

'Coo,' said she".

"I'll say something more to the point, if you don't take care. What a lot of sillies you are!"

"Then please deign to enlarge our intellects. We're hanging upon your words. Betty can stop her ears, if she thinks it will be too great a strain on her slender brains. What is it to be? A recitation from Milton, or a dissertation on the evils of levity? Miss Sullivan, your audience awaits you. Mr. Chairman, will you please introduce the lecturer?"

"Ladies and gentlemen, I hasten to explain that[44] owing to severe indisposition I am unable to be present to-night," returned Deirdre promptly.

[44]

"Oh, Irish of the Irish!" laughed the girls. "Did you say it on purpose, or did it come unconsciously?"

"I wish I were Irish. Somehow I never say funny things, not even if I try," lamented Dulcie.

"Because you couldn't. You're a dear fat dumpling, and dumplings never are funny, you know—it's against nature."

"It's not my fault if I'm fat," said Dulcie plaintively. "People say 'Laugh and grow fat', so why shouldn't a plump person be funny?"

"They are funny—very funny—though not quite in the way you mean."

"Oh, look here! Don't be horrid!"

"You began it yourself."

"Children, don't barge!" interrupted Romola Harvey. "You really are rather a set of lunatics to-night. Can't anyone tell a story?"

"I was taught to call fibbing a sin in the days of my youth," retorted Betty Scott, assuming a serious countenance.

"You—you ragtimer! I mean a real story—a tale—a legend—a romance—or whatever you choose to call it."

"Don't know any."

"We've used them all up," said Evie Bennett, yawning lustily. "We all know the legend of the Abbess Gertrude—it's Miss Birks's favourite chestnut—and what she said to the Commissioner who came to confiscate the convent: and we've had the one about[45] Monmouth's rebellion till it's as stale as stale can be. I defy 

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