off upon the word 'females.'

"Get along with your 'females'!" fired up 'Beida, springing to arms
for her sex. "I'd like to know where the world'd be without us.
But don't you see that 'tisn' _like_ Mother to be so daggin' to quit
the old house?"

"She wants to get the grievin' over, I tell you," 'Bert maintained.

As for 'Biades, he was rather more--certainly not less--of a nuisance
than children of his age usually are when a family intends a move.
He asked a thousand questions, wandered among packing-cases as in a
maze, and, if his presence were forgotten for a moment, sat down and
howled. On being picked up and righted he would account for his
emotion quite absurdly yet lucidly and in a way that wrung all
hearts. On the second day of packing he looked out from a zareba of
furniture under which he had contrived to crawl, and demanded--
"What's a Spy?"

"A Spy?" his mother echoed after he had repeated the question three
or four times. "A Spy is a wicked man: worse nor a Prooshian."

"What's a Prooshian?"

"A Prooshian," said Mrs Penhaligon, inverting one bedroom chair on
another, "is a kind o' German, and by all accounts the p'isonest.
A Spy is worse nor even a Prooshian, because he pretends he isn't
till he've wormed hisself into your confidence, an' then he comes out
in his true colours, an' the next thing you know you're stabbed in
the back in the dark." Mrs Penhaligon might miss to be lucid in
explanation, but never to be vivid.

"What's your 'confidence'?" asked 'Biades, after a digestive pause.

His sister 'Beida turned about while she bumped herself up and down
in a sitting posture on the lid of an old sea-chest overfilled with
pillows, bed-curtains, and other "soft goods."

"It isn't your stummick, on which you're crawlin' at this moment like
Satan in the garden. And only yesterday your askin' to be put into
weskits on the ground of your age! A nice business 'twould be to
keep your front in buttons!" While admonishing 'Biades, 'Beida
continued to bump herself on the sea-chest, her speech by consequence
coming in short interrupted gushes like water from a pump. "A Spy,"
she continued, "is a man what creeps in a person's belongings same as
you're doin' at this moment, an' then goes off an' gets paid for
writin' to Germany about it: which if we didn' know from bitter
experience as you couldn't spell a, b, 'ab,' we should be feelin'
nervous at this moment, the way you're behavin'."

"How can y