ge."

"A language!" the Lunch Club cried.

"Certainly. Don't you remember Fanny Roby's saying that there were
several branches, and that some were hard to trace? What could that
apply to but dialects?"

Mrs. Ballinger could no longer restrain a contemptuous laugh. "Really,
if the Lunch Club has reached such a pass that it has to go to Fanny
Roby for instruction on a subject like Xingu, it had almost better cease
to exist!"

"It's really her fault for not being clearer," Laura Glyde put in.

"Oh, clearness and Fanny Roby!" Mrs. Ballinger shrugged. "I daresay we
shall find she was mistaken on almost every point."

"Why not look it up?" said Mrs. Plinth.

As a rule this recurrent suggestion of Mrs. Plinth's was ignored in the
heat of discussion, and only resorted to afterward in the privacy of
each member's home. But on the present occasion the desire to ascribe
their own confusion of thought to the vague and contradictory nature of
Mrs. Roby's statements caused the members of the Lunch Club to utter a
collective demand for a book of reference.

At this point the production of her treasured volume gave Mrs. Leveret,
for a moment, the unusual experience of occupying the centre front; but
she was not able to hold it long, for Appropriate Allusions contained no
mention of Xingu.

"Oh, that's not the kind of thing we want!" exclaimed Miss Van Vluyck.
She cast a disparaging glance over Mrs. Ballinger's assortment of
literature, and added impatiently: "Haven't you any useful books?"

"Of course I have," replied Mrs. Ballinger indignantly; "but I keep them
in my husband's dressing-room."

From this region, after some difficulty and delay, the parlour-maid
produced the W-Z volume of an Encyclopaedia and, in deference to the
fact that the demand for it had come from Miss Van Vluyck, laid the
ponderous tome before her.

There was a moment of painful suspense while Miss Van Vluyck rubbed her
spectacles, adjusted them, and turned to Z; and a murmur of surprise
when she said: "It isn't here."

"I suppose," said Mrs. Plinth, "it's not fit to be put in a book of
reference."

"Oh, nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Ballinger. "Try X."

Miss Van Vluyck turned back through the volume, peering short-sightedly
up and down the pages, till she came to a stop and remained motionless,
like a dog on a point.

"Well, have you found it?" Mrs. Ballinger enquired, after a considerable
delay.

"Yes. I've found it," said Miss Van Vluyck in