, and
enabling her to send every storming party back to the place from whence
it came, and even invite them to attempt another assault.

Once or twice Jack turned to find his aunt watching him with a look in
her eyes which caused his own face to reflect the smile which was on
hers. She was thinking, and had been ever since she had seen the
latest addition to her court coming slowly up the front path through
the dismal drizzle, of the old favourite story, and of that part in it
where the ugly duckling, overtaken by the storm, arrived in front of
the tumble-down little cottage, which "only remained standing because
it could not decide on which side to fall first."

When the meal was over, and while the table was being cleared, Jack
wandered out into the porch, and stood watching the rain. He had
hardly been there a minute before he was joined by Barbara.

"I say," she exclaimed, "why didn't you talk at tea time? I wanted to
ask you heaps of things. Your name's Jack, isn't it? Well, mine's
Barbara; they call me Bar, because it's the American for bear, and
father says I am a young bear. I want to hear all about that pillow
fight, and those races you had in the dormitory."

"Oh, they weren't anything! How did you get to hear about them?"

"Why, Val told us."

"Well, what a fellow he is! He's always talking about the rows I get
into."

"It doesn't matter; we thought it awful fun. Helen laughed like
anything, and she's very good. I say, can you crack your fingers?"

"No; but I can crack my jaw."

"Oh, do show me!"

Jack really did possess this gruesome accomplishment; he could somehow
make a blood-curdling click with his jawbone. When he did it in
"prep." his neighbours smote him on the head with dictionaries, and
when he repeated the performance in the dormitory, fellows rose in
their beds and hurled pillows and execrations into the darkness.
Barbara, however, was charmed.

"You are clever!" she cried; "I wish I could do it. Now, come back,
and sit by me; we're going to play games."

Jack, who had cherished some vague notion that every girl was something
between a saint and a bride-cake ornament, was agreeably surprised at
this conversation with his small admirer, and readily complied with her
request. Several of the games he had never seen before, but he made
bold attempts to play them some way or another, and soon entered into
the spirit of his surroundings.

In making words out of words his sp