itt a prize pig a form of wit?"

"Pretty poor wit I should call it!"

"Father is on my side!" shouted Ned. "He says it's poor wit, which is
only one way of saying that it is wit!"

"Can wit be poor?" asked Julia.

"Father says it can."

"Then it isn't wit!" Madge protested.

"I should like to know why not. Old Mr. Tanner is a poor man, but he's
a man for all that, and votes at elections for the highest bidder.
And your logic's poor, but I suppose you'd call it logic!"

"I have an idea!" cried Madge. "I'm going to make my fortune out of
you! I'm going to make a pair of excruciatingly funny pictures of you!
The first shall be called _The Student and Logic_, and the second
shall be called _Logic and the Student!_ In the first the student
shall be patting Logic on the head, and in the second,--oh, it's an
inspiration!"

And forthwith Madge seized a large sheet of paper and began work.

"I'm not sure that this won't be the beginning of a series," she
declared. "When it's finished I shall send it to a funny paper and get
fifty dollars for it,--and when I have got fifty dollars for it,
Father will send me to Paris; won't you, Daddy, dear?"

"What's that? What's that?" asked Mr. Burtwell.

"When I get fifty dollars,--_or more!_--for my Student, you will send
me to Europe!"

"Oh, yes! And when you're Queen of England I shall be presented at
Court! Listen to what the paper says: 'The Honourable Jacob Luddington
and family have just returned from an extensive foreign tour. The two
Miss Luddingtons were presented at the Court of St. James, where their
exceptional beauty and elegance are said to have made a marked
impression.' Good for the Honourable Jacob! His father was my father's
chore-man, and here are his daughters hobnobbing with crowned heads!"

From which digression it is fair to conclude that Mr. Burtwell did not
attach any great importance to his daughter's question or to his own
answer. But Madge put away the promise in the safest recesses of her
memory as carefully as she had tucked the letter to her "dear
pickpocket" inside the red morocco pocket-book. It seemed as if the
one were likely to be called for about as soon as the other,--"which
means never at all!" she said to herself, with a profound sigh.

"The throes of creation have begun," Ned chuckled; and then, as he
watched his sister's business-like proceedings, marvelling the while
at what he secretly considered her quite phenomenal skill, he let