’Your vulgarity is simply awful, Ross, do stop, you make me feel quite ill.’ ’I venture to think, my misguided young friend——’ began Ross again. ’You know what happened to the children in the Bible,’ I interrupted, ’who mocked at their betters: a frightful animal jumped out at them and——’ Here I gave a piercing scream as the kitten suddenly decided to risk it, and landed unexpectedly in the middle of my stomach. ’Just so,’ said Ross with a howl of laughter, ’I never saw a better illustration of it in my life.’ And now I want to ask the General Public something. _Could_ you tell me why, because a person’s mother once fell off the top of a step-ladder, a person should never be allowed to go on the top step herself? It seems such a ridiculous thing to hand on from father to son. ’Gracious,’ I said, when I was rowed for it to-day, after Mr Williams had departed, ’because mother did it, it’s a thousand to one I won’t. I don’t know the actuary figures, but it practically insures me against it, Ross.’ ’I don’t care,’ said that gentleman, ’I won’t have it, and that’s all there is about it.’ ’How can you be so ridiculous. You don’t mind if I go up a tree, and I’ve done everything that you’ve done always. If you don’t think it’s dangerous for me to climb and hunt and ski, why on earth should you kick at the top of a step-ladder?’ ’Well, we won’t argue about it, Margaret.’ ’I loathe twins,’ I grumbled. And he said he did, too, the sort that spat fire when a chap tried to take care of them. Suddenly the bottom dropped out of the world, and everything that I had thought solid, stable, and immovable came crashing about me, and my brother, for the first and last time in all his life was ’meek’ to me and said,— ’Please, darling, because I found mother after she smashed herself up so badly.’ It was that tide in the affairs of men which had I taken at the flood would have tamed the lion to eat out of my hand. Oh, wasn’t I a fool to say,— ’Oh, all right, Ross.’ But there it is, and I know now what that poor darling felt when he wrote _Paradise Lost_. *CHAPTER XX* A telegram came from Monica this morning saying,— ’Please meet the 11.20 train.’ So the family turned up at the station _en masse_, but instead of the lady we expected, there descended from the guard’s van a beautiful and dignified Great Dane with a label round his neck. ’For Meg’s baronial hall. A thank-offering, sent with "Hove from a modern Lussy."’ Or, at any rate, that’s what it looked like. Monica does write so badly. The Gidger kissed the thank-offering promptly, and was rewarded with a large lick. ’Oh, _don’t_ wash me with your flannel,’ she exclaimed. Then we all introduced ourselves, and Ross observed as he edged away from a very wet tongue,— ’He must be first cousin to the dog in the Bible that was so kind to the poor beggar; you’d better call him "Moreover," after him, Meg.’ ’What dog, and what beggar?’ I asked.