mething I want to do upstairs."

"Can't I go too?" said Maggie, who, in this first day of meeting again,
loved Tom's very shadow.

"No; it's something I'll tell you about by-and-by, not yet," said Tom,
skipping away.

In the afternoon the boys were at their books in the study, preparing
the morrow's lessons, that they might have a holiday in the evening in
honour of Maggie's arrival. Tom was hanging over his Latin Grammar,
and Philip, at the other end of the room, was busy with two volumes
that excited Maggie's curiosity; he did not look at all as if he were
learning a lesson. She sat on a low stool at nearly a right angle with
the two boys, watching first one and then the other.

"I say, Magsie," said Tom at last, shutting his books, "I've done my
lessons now. Come upstairs with me."

"What is it?" said Maggie, when they were outside the door. "It isn't
a trick you're going to play me, now?"

"No, no, Maggie," said Tom, in his most coaxing tone; "it's something
you'll like ever so."

He put his arm round her neck, and she put hers round his waist, and,
twined together in this way, they went upstairs.

"I say, Magsie, you must not tell anybody, you know," said Tom, "else I
shall get fifty lines."

"Is it alive?" said Maggie, thinking that Tom kept a ferret.

"Oh, I shan't tell you," said he. "Now you go into that corner and
hide your face while I reach it out," he added, as he locked the
bedroom door behind them. "I'll tell you when to turn round. You
mustn't squeal out, you know."

"Oh, but if you frighten me, I shall," said Maggie, beginning to look
rather serious.

"You won't be frightened, you silly thing," said Tom. "Go and hide
your face, and mind you don't peep."

"Of course I shan't peep," said Maggie disdainfully; and she buried her
face in the pillow like a person of strict honour.

But Tom looked round warily as he walked to the closet; then he stepped
into the narrow space, and almost closed the door. Maggie kept her
face buried until Tom called out, "Now, then, Magsie!"

Nothing but very careful study could have enabled Tom to present so
striking a figure as he did to Maggie when she looked up. With some
burnt cork he had made himself a pair of black eyebrows that met over
his nose, and were matched by a blackness about the chin. He had wound
a red handkerchief round his cloth cap to give it the air of a turban,
and his red comforter across his breast as a scarf--an amount of r