tea. Ambrose looked on listlessly. How should he introduce the
subject with which his mind was full? There was certainly no room for
it just now between the energetic blows which David was dealing, as he
fastened up the new shelf into its place. At last he stopped and fell
back a little to look at his work.

"Is that straight?" he asked.

"It's straight enough," answered Ambrose moodily, "but I don't see much
good in putting it up."

David turned round with a face of wonder. "We must have shelves," he
said.

"But we haven't got anything to put on them," replied Ambrose. "It
looks silly to have them all empty."

David looked rather mournful.

"Of course they'd be much better full," he agreed; "but what can we do?
How can we get things?"

"Isn't it a pity," said Ambrose, "that we couldn't ask father to take us
to Rumborough? We could find enough there to fill the museum easily in
half an hour."

David nodded and sighed.

"Why shouldn't we go alone?" said Ambrose, making a bold plunge. "I
know the way." He looked full at his brother.

David did not seem at all startled. He merely said, as he put his
hammer into the tool-box--"Miss Grey wouldn't let us."

"But," continued Ambrose, feeling it easier now that he had begun,
"suppose we didn't ask her?"

David's attention was at last stirred. He turned his blue eyes gravely
towards Ambrose.

"Father and mother wouldn't like that," he said.

Ambrose was quite ready for this objection. "Well," he said, "we don't
know whether they would or not, because we can't ask them now."

"They wouldn't," repeated David decidedly.

"Mother would like the museum to be full," continued Ambrose; "we know
that. And we can't get things anywhere else. She never said we were
not to go to Rumborough alone."

David sat cross-legged on the floor beside his tool-box in an attitude
of the deepest thought. The idea began to be attractive, but he had not
the least doubt that it was wrong.

"We know, all the same, that she wouldn't let us go if we did ask her,"
he said at last.

Ambrose felt that it was time to strike a decided blow.

"Well," he said, with the air of one who has made up his mind, "_I_
shall go--and of course you needn't if you're afraid. I shall bring
home the things and put my name on all the labels, because they'll all
belong to me. It'll scarcely be your museum at all."

David's face fell. A vision rose before him of Ambrose returning from
R