sing you
that whenever you please.'

'Thank you; on condition you sing the old Tate and Brady, not your "O
Sanctissma, O Purissima,"' said the Doctor, a little mischievously.

'Which is eldest, I wonder?' said Ave, smiling, pleased to comply with
any whim of his; though too young to understand the associations that
entwine closely around all that has assisted or embodied devotion.

The music went from the sacred to the secular; and Ethel owned that the
perfectly pronounced words and admirable taste made her singing very
different from that which adorned most dinner-parties. Dr. May
intensely enjoyed, and was between tears and bravos at the charge of
the Six Hundred, when the two brothers entered, and stood silently
listening.

That return brought a change. Aubrey was indeed open and bright,
bursting out with eager communications the moment the song ceased, then
turning round with winning apologies, and hopes that he was not
interrupting; but Tom looked so stiff and polite as to chill every one,
and Averil began to talk of the children's bed-time.

The Doctor and Aubrey pressed for another song so earnestly that she
consented; but the spirit and animation were gone, and she had no
sooner finished than she made a decided move to depart, and Dr. May
accompanied the party home.

'Is my father going to put that fellow to bed?' said Tom, yawning, as
if injured by the delay of bed-time thus occasioned.

'Your courtesy does not equal his,' said Ethel.

'Nor ever will,' said Tom.

'Never,' said Ethel, so emphatically that she nettled him into adding,

'He is a standing warning against spoiling one's patients. I wouldn't
have them and their whole tag-rag and bobtail about my house for
something!'

'O, Tom, for shame!' cried Mary, bursting out in the wrath he had
intended to excite.

'Ask him which is tag, which rag, and which bobtail,' suggested Ethel.

'Mab, I suppose,' said Gertrude, happily closing the discussion, but it
was re-animated by her father's arrival.

'That's a nice girl,' he said, 'very nice; but we must not have her too
often in the evening, Mary, without Henry. It is not fair to break up
people's home party.'

'Bobber than bobtail,' murmured Tom, with a gesture only meant for
Ethel.

'Ave said he would be out till quite late, papa,' said Mary, in
self-defence.

'She ought to have been back before him,' said Dr. May. 'He didn't
seem best pleased to have found her away, and let me tell y