"It's my house! I live here!" replied Jill grandiloquently. "I am sorry you are not well. Would you like us to whistle for a cab to take you home? It's always nicest to be at home when one is ill." It was all very well for Jack to frown dissent. Jill was inclined to think that the truest wisdom lay in getting the old gentleman out of the way before her father's return, and so escape with one scolding instead of two. She raised her eyebrows, and mouthed the dumb question, "Will you tell?" while the victim continued his groans and lamentations. "Great mistake ever to leave home in these days. Can't think what I am coming to next. I merely stooped down to pick up a parcel--simplest thing in the world; done it a score of times before--and over I went full on my face. Terrible crash! Terrible crash! Paralysis now, I expect, in addition to everything else. Just my luck! A wreck, sir--a wreck! And I used to be the strongest man in the regiment. Ah, well, well, that's all over! I must be content to be on the shelf now." Betty turned towards the twins with a scrutinising gaze, but they had no eyes for her. A note of real pathos had sounded in the victim's voice as he bemoaned his lost strength, and their hearts melted before it. Jack stepped boldly forward to make his confession. "It was not paralysis, sir. It was--the parcel! We're sorry,--I'm sorry, but it was only a joke, and we never thought you would fall. No one else fell. We kept pulling it away by the string, you know, a _few_ inches at a time, so that you did not notice, but you had really farther and farther to stretch, and it was that that made you topple over." He paused, and the old gentleman stopped groaning and stared at him with eyes of crab-like protuberance. The crimson flush deepened on his cheeks, and his white whiskers appeared to bristle with wrath. He was truly an awe-inspiring object. "It was your doing, was it? You pulled away the parcel, did you? I `toppled over,' did I?" he repeated with awful deliberation. That was the lull before the storm, and then it broke in all its fury, and roared over their heads, so that they gasped and trembled before it.