ke the middle
of the day--you mustn't stand at the windows any more. It's draughty,
and it would never do for you to be getting stiff necks or swollen
glands or anything like that on the top of all there's been."

The two came slowly to the tea-table, but their looks were not very
amiable.

"You're so rude," said Dolly to her brother, "contradicting like that. I
never saw anybody so _persisting_."

"How can you help persisting when you know you're right?" said Max. "I
can't tell _stories_ to please you."

But I must say his tone was more good-natured than Dolly's.

"Well," said she, "can _I_ tell stories to please _you_? I _know_ there
are thirteen."

"And I _know_ there are only twelve," retorted Max, more doggedly.

After that they did not speak to each other all through tea-time. Nurse,
who often complained of the chatter-chatter "going through her head,"
should have been pleased at the unusual quiet, but somehow she wasn't.
She had a kind heart, and she did not like to see the little couple
looking gloomy and cross.

"Come, cheer up, my dears," she said, "what _does_ it matter? Twelve or
thirteen, though I don't know what it is you were talking about--call it
twelve-and-a-half and split the difference, won't that settle it?"

It was rather difficult not to smile at this suggestion--the idea of
chopping one of the poor little pigs in two to settle their dispute was
too absurd. But Dolly pinched up her lips; _she_ wasn't going to give
in, and smiling would have been a sort of _beginning_ of giving in, you
see. And Max, to save _him_self from any weakness of the kind, started
whistling, which nurse promptly put a stop to, telling him that
whistling at table was not "manners" at all!

This did not increase Master Max's good temper, especially as Dolly
looked very virtuous, and as if _her_ "manners" could never call for any
reproof. And a quarter-of-an-hour or so later, when mamma came up to pay
them a little visit, it was very plain to her that there was a screw,
and rather a big screw, loose somewhere in the nursery machinery. For
Max was sitting in one corner pretending to read, and Dolly was sitting
in another corner--the two furthest-off-from-each-other corners they
could possibly find--pretending to sew, and on both little faces the
expression was one which mammas are always very sorry indeed to see.

But mammas learn by experience to be wise. And all wise people know that
when other people are "upset"