father's very nose, hoping to attract favourable comment.

But he was bidden irritably "go and play," and saw he would
have to find fresh means of appeasement.

He wandered into the study, with vague thoughts of tidying
the tidy bookshelves; but Pip was there, surrounded with books
and whittling a stick for a catapult, so he went out again.
Then he climbed the stairs and explored his father's bedroom
and dressing-room. In the latter there was a wide field for his
operations. A full-dress uniform was lying across a chair, and it
struck Bunty the gold buttons were looking less bright than they
should, so he spent a harmless quarter of an hour in polishing
them up. Next, he burnished some spurs, which also was harmless.
Then he cast about for fresh employment.

There was quite a colony of dusty boots in one corner of the
room, and there was a great bottle of black, treacly looking
varnish on the mantelpiece. Bunty conceived the brilliant idea of
cleaning the whole lot and standing them in a neat row to meet his
father's delighted eyes. He found a handkerchief on the floor, of
superfine cambric, though dirty, poured upon it a liberal allowance
of varnish, and attacked the first pair.

A bright polish rewarded him, for they were patent leather ones;
but the next and the next and the next would not shine, however
hard he rubbed. There was a step on the stair, the firm, well-known
step of his father, and he paused a moment with a look of
conscious virtue on his small shiny face.

But it fled all at once, and a look of horror replaced it. He had
stuck the bottle on a great armchair for convenience, as he was
sitting on the floor, and now he noticed it had fallen on its side
and a black, horrid stream was issuing from its neck.

And it was the chair with the uniform on, and one of the sleeves
was soaked with the stuff, and the beautiful white shirt that
lay there, too, waiting for a button, was sticky, horrible!
Bunty gave a wild, terrified look round the room for some place
to efface himself, but there were no sheltering corners or curtains,
and there was not time to get into the bedroom and under the bed.
Near the window was a large-sized medicine chest, and in despair
Bunty crushed himself into it, his legs huddled up, his head
between his knees, and an ominous rattle of displaced bottles
in his ears. The next minute his father was in the room.

"Great Heavens! God bless my soul!" he said, and Bunty shivered