oothing matters if she could. "Carol is--is just fine at it,
really. She--she's making a Venus de Milo, and it's good. But we
can't remember whether her arm is off at the elbow or below the
shoulder----" An enormous gulp, and by furious blinking Lark managed
to crowd back the tears that would slip to the edge of her lashes.
"I--I'm very sorry, Prudence."

"Very well, Lark, you may go. I do not really object to your modeling
in mud, I am sure. I am sorry you look so disreputable. You must
change your shoes and stockings at once, and then you can go on with
your modeling. But there must be no more pushing and chasing. I'll
see Connie about that to-night. Now----"

"Oh! Oh! Oh! What in the world is that?"

This was a chorus of several Ladies' Aid voices,--a double quartette at
the very least. Lark gave a sharp exclamation and began looking
hurriedly about her on the floor.

"It's got in here,--just as I expected," she exclaimed. "I said you
would be sorry, Prue,--Oh, there it is under your chair, Mrs. Prentiss.
Just wait,--maybe I can shove it back in the box again."

This was greeted with a fresh chorus of shrieks. There was a hurried
and absolute vacation of that corner of the front room. The Ladies
fled, dropping their cherished sewing, shoving one another in a most
Unladies-Aid-like way.

And there, beneath a chair, squatted the cause of the confusion, an
innocent, unhappy, blinking toad!

"Oh, Larkie!"

This was a prolonged wail.

"It's all right, Prue, honestly it is," urged Lark with pathetic
solemnity. "We didn't do it for a joke. We're keeping him for a good
purpose. Connie found him in the garden,--and--Carol said we ought to
keep him for Professor Duke,--he asked us to bring him things to cut up
in science, you remember. So we just shoved him into this shoe box,
and--we thought we'd keep him in the bath-tub until morning. We did it
for a good purpose, don't you see we did? Oh, Prudence!"

Prudence was horribly outraged, but even in that critical moment,
justice insisted that Lark's arguments were sound. The professor had
certainly asked the scholars to bring him "things to cut up." But a
toad! A live one!--And the Ladies' Aid! Prudence shivered.

"I am sure you meant well, Larkie," she said in a low voice, striving
hard to keep down the bitter resentment in her heart, "I know you did.
But you should not have brought that--that thing--into the house. Pick
him up at once,