ee us, because we were
hiding behind the curtains, but it was as good as a play to watch first
one, then the other, drop her work and put up her hand to her eye? Then
they began shaking their fists across the road, for they knew it was us,
because we had played some fine tricks on them before. On wet days we
used to make up a sham parcel, tie a thread to the end, and put it on
the side of the pavement. Everyone who came along stooped down to pick
it up, we gave a jerk to the string and moved it on a little further,
then they gave another grab, and once or twice a man overbalanced
himself and fell down, but it didn't always come off so well as that--
oh, it was capital sport!"

"You got into trouble yourselves sometimes. You didn't always get the
best of it," Norah reminded him. "Do you remember the day when you
found a ladder leaning against the area railings of a house in the white
terrace? Father had forbidden you to climb ladders, but you were a
naughty boy, as usual, and began to do it, and when you got to the top,
the ladder overbalanced, and you fell head over heels into the area. It
is a wonder you were not killed that time!"

Raymond chuckled softly, as if at a pleasant remembrance. "But I was
not, you see, and the cook got a jolly fright. She was making pastry at
a table by the window, and down we came, ladder and I, the finest smash
in the world. There was more glass than flour in the pies that day!"

"But father had to pay for new windows, and you were all over bruises
from head to foot--"

"That didn't matter. It was jolly. I could have exhibited myself in a
show as a `boy leopard,' and made no end of money. And I wasn't the
only one who made father pay for new windows. When Bob was a little
fellow, he broke the nursery window by mistake, and a glazier came to
mend it. Bob sat on a stool watching him do it, and snored all the
time--Bob always snores when he is interested--and as soon as the man
had picked up his tools and left the room, what did he do but jump up
and send a toy horse smashing through the pane again. He wanted to
watch the glazier put in another, but he hadn't the pleasure of seeing
it mended that time. He was whipped and sent to bed."

"We-w-w-well," cried Bob, who was afflicted with a stammer when he was
excited, "I didn't c-c-ut off my eyelashes, anyway! Norah went up to
her room one day and p-played barber's shop. She cut lumps off her hair
wherever she could get a