that that pleased Lady Catherine so much.

It was one day when Father came home cross, and was very much vexed to
find us playing about the house. Arthur had got a new Adventure Book,
and he had been reading to us about the West Coast of Africa, and
niggers, and tom-toms, and "going Fantee;" and James gave him a lot of
old corks out of the pantry, and let him burn them in a candle. It
rained, and we could not go out; so we all blacked our faces with
burnt cork, and played at the West Coast in one of the back passages,
and at James being the captain of a slave ship, because he tried to
catch us when we beat the tom-toms too near him when he was cleaning
the plate, to make him give us rouge and whitening to tattoo with.

Dear Father came home rather earlier than we expected, and rather
cross. Chris did not hear the front door, because his ears were
pinched up with tying curtain rings on to them, and just at that
minute he shouted, "I go Fantee!" and tore his pinafore right up the
middle, and burst into the front hall with it hanging in two pieces by
the armholes, his eyes shut, and a good grab of James's rouge-powder
smudged on his nose, yelling and playing the tom-tom on what is left
of Arthur's drum.

Father was very angry indeed, and Chris was sent to bed, and not
allowed to go down to dessert; and Lady Catherine was dining at our
house, so he missed her.

Next time she called, and saw Chris, she asked him why he had not been
at dessert that night. Mother looked at Chris, and said, "Why was it,
Chris? Tell Aunt Catherine." Mother thought he would say, "Because I
tore my pinafore, and made a noise in the front hall." But he smiled,
the grave way Chris does, and said, "Because Father came home cross."
And Lady Catherine was pleased, but Mother was vexed.

I am quite sure Chris meant no harm, but he does say very funny
things. Perhaps it is because his head is rather large for his body,
with some water having got into his brain when he was very little, so
that we have to take care of him. And though he does say very odd
things, very slowly, I do not think any one of us tries harder to be
good.

I remember once Mother had been trying to make us forgive each other's
trespasses, and Arthur would say that you cannot _make_ yourself feel
kindly to them that trespass against you; and Mother said if you make
yourself do right, then at last you get to feel right; and it was very
soon after this that Harry and Christopher