e me that paper this
instant!"

"No, no! It's much too interesting. Let go! Don't be silly! How can you?
Oh, what a shame!" as Ulyth in her anger tore the manuscript across and
flung it into the fire.

"Whew! Now you've gone and done it!" whistled Rona.

Ulyth was holding down the last flaming fragment with the poker. When it
had expired she turned to the guilty circle. "Who took my papers from my
bedroom?"

Her voice was sharp, and her eyes fixed full on Rona.

"I didn't touch them. I never laid so much as a finger on them,"
protested the Cuckoo.

"But you told someone where they were?"

Rona winked in reply. Yes, alas! winked consciously and deliberately.
(It was well for her that Miss Moseley was not in the room.)

"I knew you'd got something there," she admitted. "Were you such an
innocent as to think I never saw you scribbling away hard in the early
mornings? Why, I was foxing! I used to watch you while I was snoring,
and nearly died with laughing because you never found me out."

If eyes could slay, Ulyth's would have finished Rona at that moment. But
Addie Knighton, whose suspension of mirth had been merely a species of
temporary paralysis, now relapsed into a choking series of guffaws, in
which the others joined boisterously.

"I can't--get--over--seaweed--and faded gooseberries!" crowed Addie
hysterically.

"I don't catch flies with my open mouth!" shouted Mary Acton, suspending
her knitting in her indignation.

"Will somebody please measure the twins' waists?" bleated Christine.

"I didn't say it was meant for any of you. If the cap fits, put it on.
Listeners hear no good of themselves, and no more do people who read
what isn't intended for them. It serves you all right, so there!" and
Ulyth flounced out of the room.

She ran straight up to her bedroom, and burst into tears. It was such a
tragi-comedy ending to her literary ambition. She would rather the girls
had been more indignant than that they had laughed so much.

"I'll never write another line again," she resolved; and then she
thought of the binding she had always intended to have on her first
published book, and wept harder.

"Ulyth," said the Cuckoo, stealing in rather shamefacedly, "I'm really
frightfully sorry if you're riled. I didn't know you cared all that much
about those old papers. I told Addie, as a joke, and she went and poked
them out. I think they were fine. It was a shame to burn them. Can't you
write them over again