ly," she
said, "by naming it in the French and then making the appropriate
gesture."

She made the experiment on Hannah, and it worked well enough. She would
say "butter" or "spoon" and point to her place at the table; but Hannah
almost left on the strength of it, and when she tried it on Mr.
Jennings, the fishman, he told all over Penzance that she had lost
either her mind or her teeth.

Aggie and I were extremely uneasy all of July, for Tish does nothing
without a motive, and she was learning in French such warlike phrases as
"Take the trenches," "The enemy is retiring," and "We must attack from
the rear." She also took to testing out the engine of her automobile in
various ways, and twice, trying to cross a plowed field with it, had to
be drawn out with a rope. She took to driving at night without lights
also, and had the ill luck to run into the Penzance doctor's buggy and
take a wheel off it.

It was after that incident, when we had taken the doctor home and put
him to bed, that I demanded an explanation.

But she only said with a far-away look in her eyes: "It may be a useful
accomplishment sometime. If one were going after wounded at night it
would be invaluable."

"Not if you killed all the doctors on the way!" I snapped.

The limit to our patience came soon after that. One morning about the
first of August the boatman from the lake came up the path with a spade
over his shoulder. Tish, we perceived, tried to take him aside, but he
gave her no time.

"Well, I've done it, Miss Tish," he said, "and God only knows what'll
happen if somebody runs into it between now and tomorrow morning."

"Nobody will know you did it unless you continue to shout the way you
are doing now."

"Oh, I'll not tell," he observed; "I'm not so proud of it. But
'twouldn't surprise me a mite if we both did some time together in the
county jail, on the head of it, Miss Tish."

Well, Aggie went pale, but Tish merely gave him five dollars and spent
the rest of the day shut in the garage with her car. I went back and
looked in the window during the afternoon, and she was on her back
under it, hammering at something.

That night at dinner she made an announcement.

"I have for some time," she said, "been considering--go out, Hannah, and
close the door--been considering the values of different engines for an
ambulance which I propose to take to France."

"Tish!" Aggie cried in a heart-rending tone.

"And I have come to the concl