nd you weren't
anywhere, so there was only Baby and me."

"And what did you do?" Meg asked, curious in spite of herself.

"Oh, Baby talked to Miss Gormeston, and they asked me to play,"
she returned, "so I played the 'Keel Row.' Only I forgot
till I had finished that it was in two sharps," she added sadly.
"And then Baby told Mrs. Gormeston all about Judy leaving the
General at the Barracks, and being sent to boarding school for it,
and about the green frog Bunty gave her, and, then Father said
we'd better go to bed, and asked why ever you didn't come in."

"I'll go, I'll go," Meg said hastily, "he'll be fearfully cross
to-morrow about it. Oh! and, Nell, go and tell Martha to
send in the wine and biscuits and things in half an hour."

She flung off her cloud, smoothed her ruffled hair, and peeped
in the hall-stand glass to see if the night wind had taken away
the traces of her recent tears. Then she went into the drawing-roam,
where her father was looking quite heated and unhappy over
his efforts to entertain four guests who were of the class
popularly known as "heavy in hand:"

"Play something, Meg," he said presently, when greetings were
finished, and a silence seemed settling down over them all again;
"or sing something that will be better--haven't you anything you
can sing?"

Now Meg on ordinary occasions had a pleasant, fresh little voice
of her own, that could be listened to with a certain amount of
pleasure, but this evening she was tired and excited and unhappy.
She sang "Within a mile of Edinboro' town," and was exceedingly
flat all through.

She knew her father was sitting on edge all the time, and that her
mistakes were grating on him, and at the end of the song, rather
than turn round immediately and face them all, she began to play
Kowalski's March Hongroise. But the keys seemed to be rising up
and hitting her hands, and the piano was growing unsteady, and
rocking to and fro in an alarming manner; she made a horrible
jangle as she clutched at the music-holder for safety, and the
next minute swayed from the stool and fell in a dead, faint right
into Dr. Gormeston's arms, providentially extended just in time.

The heavy, heated atmosphere had proved too much for her, in her
unhinged state of mind. Captain Woolcot was extraordinarily
upset by the occurrence; not one of his children had ever done
such a thing before, and as Meg lay on the sofa, with her
little fair head drooping against the red