the window wrathfully.

“Hi!”

“No, not surprised.”

“Hi!”

“And talking of being surprised, I am reminded of a little story which may be new to some of you present here to-night. It seems that a certain Irishman——”

From the days when their ancestresses had helped the menfolk of the tribe to make marauding Danes wish they had stayed in Denmark, the female members of Claire Lippett’s family had always been women of action. Having said “Hi!” twice, their twentieth-century descendant seemed to consider that she had done all that could reasonably be expected of her in the way of words. With a graceful swing of her right arm, she sent the onion shooting upward. And such was the never-failing efficiency of this masterly girl that it whizzed through the open window, from which, after a brief interval, there appeared, leaning{39} out, the dress-shirted and white-tied upper portion of Mr. Willoughby Braddock. He was rubbing his ear.

{39}

“Be quiet, can’t you?” said Miss Lippett.

Mr. Braddock gazed austerely into the depths. Except that the positions of the characters were inverted and the tone of the dialogue somewhat different, it might have been the big scene out of Romeo and Juliet.

“What did you say?”

“I said be quiet. Miss Kay wants to get a bit of sleep. How can she get a bit of sleep with that row going on?”

“Clara!” said Mr. Braddock portentously.

“Claire,” corrected the girl coldly, insisting on a point for which she had had to fight all her life.

Mr. Braddock gulped.

“I shall—er—I shall speak to your mother,” he said.

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