stn't come to me, darling, this is Miss Bibby's holiday,
you don't want to spoil it for her, do you?" Miss Bibby looked at him
beseechingly.

But Max's lip drooped lower and lower. Outside in the garden pranced
Muffie and Pauline, a long tasselled drawback from the dining-room
curtains, sweeping magnificently after each of them.

They had thought of them first, they insisted and, strongest reason of
all, had got them first. Max had better be a sheep or a Manx cat, and
not bother about a tail.

But Max, after a heart-breaking attempt to remove the drawing-room
tie-back, which some over-provident person had stitched firmly in its
place (as if anticipating unhallowed use being made of it), Max had gone
bursting with his woes to the one who held his mother's place.

"Please run away, darling," said Miss Bibby again.

But Max sank down to the ground, and lifted up his voice in a bitter
howl.

"Mamma--I want my mamma," he yelled, as if he thought that by pitching
the key high his voice might sound across the watery waste that
separated her from him.

Miss Bibby was not proof against this; in fact it is just possible that
Max had long since discovered that this mode of appeal was the most
successful one he could essay.

She kissed and comforted him and, holding his hand, went out of the room
in search of some article that would lend itself to the present
necessity.

Max dragged her to the drawing-room.

"Cut it off," he said, temptingly, "you've got lissors."

There is no doubt whatever that in the circumstances Mrs. Lomax herself
would have promptly given the much-desired article.

But Miss Bibby had established herself as anxious caretaker of the
household chattels as well as children.

"Oh, darling!" she said, "I couldn't possibly. Mamma's pretty tie-back
to trail in the dust!"

"I wouldn't lail it on the paths, only on the lass," said Max.

But Miss Bibby still shook her head, and Max began to work up from low
down in his breast another howl.

Then Miss Bibby had a brilliant notion. She caught sight of a length of
rope hanging on the verandah post, relic of a hammock that had gone the
way of most hammocks.

"Where is a knife?" she said, "and run and get me a comb, Max."

In five minutes she had half a yard of the excellent material
beautifully unravelled, and Max was crazy with pride and eagerness to
burst out upon the envious gaze of his sisters thus caparisoned.

He could hardly wait for the real