through a small hole in the valance.

The door opens noisily, and--enter Roly with a cane in his hand and a ferocious gleam in his eyes.

"Oh, Roly!" I gasp, scrambling out of my hiding-place, "what a fright you gave us! We were sure it was papa."

"Where on earth have you come from?" asked Roly, gazing with undisguised amazement at the figure I present. "And--don't come any nearer--'paws off, Pompey'--what is the matter with your hands?"

"Oh, I had just brought up Billy some dinner, and when I heard you I ran under the bed and tripped over the carpet and fell splash into the gravy. But it is nothing," I wind up, airily.

"Nothing! I wish it was less. Go wash yourself, you dirty child."

Then resuming the ferocious aspect, and with uplifted cane, he advances on Billy.

"William"--imitating papa's voice to a nicety--"I have not yet done with you. What, sir, did you mean by exposing your sensitive sister to the criticisms of a crowded table? If your own gentlemanly instincts are not sufficiently developed to enable you to understand how unpardonable are personal remarks, let this castigation, that a sense of duty compels me to bestow, be the means of teaching you."

Billy grins, and for the third time commences his dinner while Roland leans against the window-shutter and contemplates him with lazy curiosity.

"Billy," he asks, presently, "is mutton--when the fat has grown white and the gravy is in tiny lumps--a good thing?"

"No, it ain't," returns Billy, grumpily, and with rather more than his usual vulgarity.

"I ask merely for information," says Roly. "It certainly _looks_ odd."

"It's _beastly_," says Billy. "If the governor goes in for any more of this kind of thing I'll cut and run; that's what I'll do."

"Why didn't you have some dumpling?" Roland goes on, smoothly. "The whipped cream with it was capital."

"Dumpling?" says Billy, regarding me fixedly; "dumpling! Phyllis, was there dumpling?"

"There was," I reply.

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