in cleaning his gun, and after luncheon he brought
it into the nursery to "finish" with a peculiarly aggravating air.

"When shall you be ready to rehearse?" I asked.

"Oh, presently," said Philip, "there's plenty of time yet. It's a
great nuisance," he added, "I'll never have anything to do with
theatricals again. They make a perfect slave of one."

"_You've_ not slaved much, at any rate," said Charles.

"You'd better not give me any of your cheek," said Philip
threateningly.

"We've done without him for a week, I don't know why we shouldn't do
without him to-morrow," muttered Alice from the corner where she was
sewing gold paper stars on to the Enchanted Prince's tunic.

"I wish you could," growled Philip, who took the suggestion more
quietly than I expected; "anybody could do the Dragon, there's no
acting in it!"

"I won't," said Charles, "Isobel gave me the Enchanted Prince or the
Woolly Beast, and I shall stick to my part."

"Could I do the Dragon?" asked Bobby, releasing his hot face from the
folds of an old blue cloak lined with red, in which he was rehearsing
his walk as a belated wayfarer.

"Certainly not," said I, "you're the Bereaved Father and the Faithful
Attendant to begin with, and I hope you won't muddle them. And you're
Twelve Travellers as well, and the thunder, remember!"

"I don't care how many I do, if only I can," said Bobby, drawing his
willing arm across his steaming forehead. "I should like to have a
fiery tail."

"You can't devour yourself once--let alone twelve times," said I
sternly. "Don't be silly, Bob."

It was not Bob I was impatient with in reality, it was Philip.

"If you really mean to desert the theatricals after all you promised,
I would much rather try to do without you," said I indignantly.

"Then you may!" retorted Philip. "I wash my hands of it and of the
whole lot of you, and of every nursery entertainment henceforward!"
and he got the fragments of his gun together with much clatter. But
Charles had posted himself by the door to say his say, and to be ready
to escape when he had said it.

"You're ashamed of it, that's it," said he; "you want to sit among the
grown-ups with a spy-glass, now you've got Apothecary Clinton's son
for a friend,"--and after this brief and insulting summary of the
facts, Charles vanished. But Philip, white with anger, was too quick
for him, and at the top of the back-stairs he dealt him such a heavy
blow that Charles fell head-long do