which
made up--as understood by us--the art of polite conversation.

'I don't like society people,' put in Harold from the sofa, where he was
sprawling at full length--a sight the daylight hours would have blushed
to witness. 'There were some of 'em here this afternoon, when you two
had gone off to the station. O, and I found a dead mouse on the lawn,
and I wanted to skin it, but I wasn't sure I knew how, by myself; and
they came out into the garden, and patted my head--I wish people
wouldn't do that--and one of 'em asked me to pick her a flower. Don't
know why she couldn't pick it herself; but I said, "All right, I will if
you'll hold my mouse." But she screamed, and threw it away; and Augustus
(the cat) got it, and ran away with it. I believe it was really his
mouse all the time, 'cos he'd been looking about as if he had lost
something, so I wasn't angry with _him_. But what did _she_ want to
throw away my mouse for?'

[Illustration: '_The procession passing solemnly across the moon-lit
Blue Room_']

'You have to be careful with mice,' reflected Edward; 'they're such
slippery things. Do you remember we were playing with a dead mouse once
on the piano, and the mouse was Robinson Crusoe, and the piano was the
island, and somehow Crusoe slipped down inside the island, into its
works, and we couldn't get him out, though we tried rakes and all sorts
of things, till the tuner came. And that wasn't till a week after, and
then----'

Here Charlotte, who had been nodding solemnly, fell over into the
fender; and we realised that the wind had dropped at last, and the house
was lapped in a great stillness. Our vacant beds seemed to be calling to
us imperiously; and we were all glad when Edward gave the signal for
retreat. At the top of the staircase Harold unexpectedly turned
mutinous, insisting on his right to slide down the banisters in a free
country. Circumstances did not allow of argument; I suggested
frog's-marching instead, and accordingly frog's-marched he was, the
procession passing solemnly across the moon-lit Blue Room, with Harold
horizontal and limply submissive. Snug in bed at last, I was just
slipping off into slumber when I heard Edward explode, with chuckle
and snort.

'By Jove!' he said; 'I forgot all about it. The new tutor's sleeping in
the Blue Room!'

'Lucky he didn't wake up and catch us,' I grunted drowsily; and, without
another thought on the matter, we both sank into well-earned repose.

Next mo