with a pleasing and serpentine ornamentation embellishing the inscription. In vain had Mollie, with tears in her eyes, implored her father to 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.

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