fish, or tramp miles over the
heathery moors, they voted me "a jolly sort of girl", and included me in
the bosom of the family circle.

"We thought, as you'd lived abroad, you'd perhaps go about shaking out
your skirts, and holding up a parasol, and shriek if you saw a cow,"
said George, who had tested my courage by springing at me from behind
corners, letting a bat loose in my bedroom, and locking me into the dark
jam-cupboard, all of which ordeals I had borne with heroism.

"She can't be troubled with nerves if she can stand the Babe's little
diversions. It makes a fellow quite limp to look at him this hot
weather. Why don't you give her a book and a deck-chair in the garden,
and leave her in peace?" said Edward, his suggestions for my
entertainment being based on his own ideals of enjoyment.

With Dick I soon won golden opinions, as I took an interest in the
birds' eggs, and would consent to carry the wriggling caterpillars and
slimy snails which he collected on our walks, or to fill my pockets with
stones and other specimens for the museum. This museum was a large
cabinet with glass doors, which filled one entire end of the school-room
at Marshlands. It held a very miscellaneous assortment of treasures, to
which both Cathy and the boys were constantly adding, sometimes with
rather more zeal than discretion. I shall never forget how Dick put the
hornet's nest there.

"I've smoked it thoroughly with brown paper," he said, "and the grubs
are as dead as door-nails, so you needn't be at all afraid of it."

But I fear the brown paper could not have been strong enough after all.
A few days afterwards we were sitting at tea in the school-room, when a
peculiarly irritated buzzing noise began to resound from the region of
the cabinet, and Edward, who was giving us an imitation of his classical
master's stately style on speech-day, suddenly ducked his head in a most
undignified fashion, and, seizing the bread-knife, made a frantic cut
into the air.

"It's a hornet!" he exclaimed. "Just see the size of it! Take care,
Cathy, the brute's going into your hair! Look out! If there isn't
another of them!"

We jumped up in a hurry; there was not only another, but more and more
and more, and, like the oysters in the ballad of the walrus and the
carpenter, they came up so thick and fast that for the moment it seemed
to us as if the whole room were full of yellow stripes and buzzing
wings. I am not brave where wasps are concerne