Miss Kinross rode briskly up the drive, perhaps an hour later, she
had no suspicion that so truly shocking an occurrence had befallen the
sunny place.

She leaned her bicycle against a ficus-covered post and crossed the
verandah, a little surprised at the silence, for she was accustomed on
her morning visits to being run into by Max on the red tricycle and to
find little girls everywhere swinging, skipping, hoop-bowling, or
doll-carrying.

She crossed the verandah and rang the bell; the door was closed--a most
unusual thing.

Anna appeared and seemed to hesitate about asking her in.

"Would you mind coming into the dining-room, ma'am?" she said at last;
for how might a sitting-room be used for its legitimate purpose with a
ramping rebel at large in it?

"Certainly," said Miss Kinross. "Is Miss Bibby in?"

"Ye-e-es," said Anna, and opened the dining-room door.

The little girls were all here. Miss Bibby had said they might do
exactly as they liked this morning. Pauline sat crocheting at a grey
woollen shoulder cape which was destined for some old woman in some old
asylum, and was among the least interesting of her work. Lynn was
reading. Not face downward, on a rug and with swiftly-moving eyes and
hurrying breath, as was her custom with a living book, but she had
merely picked up the _History of England_ and sat with it quite
listlessly on a chair. And Muffie was standing at the window, breathing
on a pane from time to time and then drearily drawing figures upon her
breath.

How could one be gay and do as one liked with the sitting-room door shut
and locked on Little Knickerbockers?

Miss Bibby herself was standing before the bookcase, turning over a
volume here and another one there. When Miss Kinross came in she was at
Herbert Spencer's _Education_, thinking that surely so wise and
practical an observer of youth as he must have offered some recipe for
such a situation as had just passed.

But Spencer held out no helping hand. The lines on her forehead
deepened.

"Are you all well?" said Miss Kinross, coming forward to shake hands
with her. "How do you do, little girls? How are the coughs? And where is
my little cavalier?"

"He--he--" said Miss Bibby, hesitating a second, then deciding not quite
to conceal the outrage since here might be wisdom. Surely here _must_ be
wisdom; for could any one dwell side by side with an author like Hugh
Kinross and not absorb it in every pore?

"Max has been," said Mis