ds, and if ever I turned round for a moment,
some of my things--my scissors or thimble or something--were sure to
have disappeared. At last I got so angry that I could be patient no
longer.

"Tom," I said, "you are perfectly unbearable," and I tried to snatch
from him my reel of sewing cotton which he had pulled away just as I was
going to take a new thread. But he jumped up on a chair and stretched
his hand out of my reach. I climbed up after him--I was crying with
vexation--and had nearly succeeded in pulling his arm down to get at the
reel tightly clasped in his hand, when unluckily--oh, how unlucky we
were!--the chair toppled over, and Tom and I both fell on the ground in
a heap. I screamed, and I think Tom screamed, and just at that moment
Uncle Geoff put his head in at the door. Was it not unfortunate? Such a
scene--Tom and I kicking and quarrelling on the floor, Racey crying
because in our fall we had interfered with what he called his railway
line round the room, a jug of water which Tom had fetched out of the
bedroom--threatening, to tease me, to wash Florimel's face--and which he
had forgotten to take back again, upset and broken and a stream all over
the carpet-- oh dear, it was unlucky!

We jumped up as quickly as we could, and stood silent and ashamed. Had
it been Uncle Geoff alone, I think we would have told him frankly how
sorry we were, and perhaps he would have got to understand us better,
but of course there was Mrs. Partridge stumping in behind him. Uncle
Geoff did not speak to us, he turned round to Mrs. Partridge at once.

"Really," he said, "this is too bad. If these children cannot be trusted
to be alone five minutes without risk of burning themselves or drowning
themselves, can't you let some one stay with them, Partridge?"

He spoke very sharply, and Mrs. Partridge's face got very red.

"I'm sure I don't know what more I can do," she said in a very injured
tone. "There's all the work of the house to do as usual, and indeed a
great deal more _now_, of course. And how I can spare any one to be all
day long with them I'm sure I can't see. I have to go away to Browngrove
in half-an-hour, all about the nurse for them, sir. I do think they
might try to be good and quiet for an hour or two, with every one doing
their best for them."

Uncle Geoff looked as if he really did not know what to say.

"I certainly think so too," he said. "I had no idea you ever quarrelled
with your brothers, Audrey," h