it shall. And Charles may be uncommonly glad if I let him
act at all after the way he behaved yesterday."

"The way _you_ behaved, you, mean," said I--for my temper was slipping
from my grasp;--"you might have broken his neck."

"All the more danger in his provoking me, and in your encouraging
him."

I began to feel giddy, which is always a bad sign with us. It rang in
my mind's ear that this was what came of being forbearing with a bully
like Philip. But I still tried to speak quietly.

"If you think," said I through my teeth, "that I am going to let you
knock the others about, and rough-ride it over our theatricals, you
are mistaken."

"_Your_ theatricals!" cried Philip, mimicking me. "I like that! Whom
do the properties belong to, pray?"

"If it goes by buying," was my reply to this rather difficult
question, "most of them belong to Granny, for the canvas and the
paints and the stuff for the dresses, have gone down in the bills; and
if it goes by work, I think we have done quite as much as you. And if
some of the properties _are_ yours, the play is mine. And as to the
scene--you did the distance in the middle of the wood, but Alice and I
painted all the foreground."

"Then you may keep your foreground, and I'll take my distance," roared
Philip, and in a moment his pocket-knife was open, and he had cut a
hole a foot-and-a-half square in the centre of the Enchanted Forest,
and Bobby's amazed face (he was running a tuck in his cloak behind the
scenes) appeared through the aperture.

If a kind word would have saved the fruits of our week's hard labour,
hot one of us would have spoken it. We sacrifice anything we possess
in our ill-tempered family--except our wills.

"And you may take your play, and I'll take my properties," continued
Philip, gathering up hats, wigs, and what not from the costumes which
Alice and I had arranged in neat groups ready for the green-room.
"I'll give everything to Clinton this evening for his new theatre, and
we'll see how you get on without the Fiery Dragon."

"Clinton _can't_ want a fiery dragon when he's got you," said Charles,
in a voice of mock compliment.

The Fairy Godmother's crabstick was in Philip's hand. He raised it,
and flew at Charles, but I threw myself between them and caught
Philip's arm.

"You shall not hit him," I cried.

Aunt Isobel is right about one thing. If one _does_ mean to stop short
in a quarrel one must begin at a very early stage. It is easier to