s how I work it out: Smith's sister was a brick--Smith's sister is
a girl--therefore, as one girl can be a brick, so can other girls, other
sisters, be bricks.

Now for my true yarn. To separate the circumstances of the story from
the story itself, I will first give you the circumstances.

Smith and I lived next door to each other, and were close chums,
especially at intervals. He was a very generous chap--he'd give a friend
anything he'd got. When he was laid low with illness last summer, I
slipped into his bedroom by way of the verandah, to have a look at him,
and he gave me the scarlet fever. He was such a very generous chap that
he never wanted to keep anything all to himself. The fever stayed with
both of us as long as it could, and left us a good deal weaker than it
found us. Finding us both in need of a long and thorough change, Smith's
father and mine put their heads together, and finally decided to send us
to North Wales for the rest of the summer and the autumn. The idea was
promptly carried out.

They didn't, strictly speaking, "send" us, for they came with us. In
fact, it was quite a carriage-ful of us that steamed away north-west
from Paddington--namely, Smith, myself, Smith's father and mother, my
father and mother, a number of boxes, portmanteaux, and parcels, and
Smith's sister. I put her last because at the time she was last in my
estimation.

We had a lovely journey, to a lovely little out-of-the-way and
out-of-the-world station, which was spelt with all consonants, and
pronounced with three sneezes, a cough and two gasps. From the station
we had a long drive to the remote farmhouse in which our fathers had
taken apartments.

In this delicious old farmhouse we soon made ourselves--Smith and
I--quite at home. It was in a beautiful valley. Tremendous hills rose
all round it. On the very tops of some of the mountains there was snow
almost all the year round. Glens, and brooks, and streams, and
waterfalls simply abounded.

After a fortnight our two fathers had to return to London, leaving
behind them our mothers, us, and Smith's sister.

Oh, what a time we had then! Smith shot me by accident in the leg with
the farmer's gun--Smith himself got almost drowned in two different
streams, and was once carried over a waterfall, and dashed against the
stones. On all three occasions he was getting black in the face when
pulled out. I fell down a precipice in the mountains, and was rescued
with the greatest