"I'll tell you about my windy organ," Boodles went on, trying to force a little sunshine through what threatened to be steady rain. "With the wind, doors, and windows, I can play all sorts of marches. With my bedroom window open, and the door shut, the wind plays sad music, a funeral march; but when I shut my window, and open the one in the next room, it is loud and lively, like a military march. If I open the sitting-room window, and the one in the passage up-stairs, and shut all the doors, it is splendid, Mary, a coronation march. I hear the procession sweeping up-stairs, and the clapping of hands, and the crowd going to and fro, murmuring ah-ah-ah. But the best of all is when I open what was old daddy's bedroom window, and sit in my own room with the door shut, for the wind plays a wedding-march then, and I can make it loud or soft by opening and shutting my window. That is the march I play every evening till I get the shivers." "She'm dafty getting," muttered Mary, understanding nothing of the musical principle of the little girl's amusement. "Don't ye du it, my dear," she went on. "'Twill just be making you mazed, and us will find ye jumping at the walls like a bumbledor on a window." "I'll try and keep sensible, but there is Christmas, and January, and February. Oh, Mary, I shall never do it," cried Boodles. "I shall be mad before March, which is the proper time for madness." "Get another maid to come and bide wi' ye," Mary suggested. "How can I?" "Mebbe some old dame, who wants a home--" began Mary. "She would be an expense, and she might get drunk, rob me, beat me, perhaps." "Her wouldn't," declared Mary, with a glance at her big stick. "I must go on being alone and making believe," said Boodles. "Won't the butiful young gentleman come and live wi' ye?" said poor Mary, quite thinking she had found a splendid way out of the difficulty. "Silly old thing," sighed Boodles, actually smiling. Then she rose to go, and Mary tramped heavily to her dairy. "Tak' eggs and butter wi' ye," she called. "Aw, my dear, yew mun't starve, or you'll get decline. 'Tis cruel to go abroad on an empty stomach." "I'm not a snake," said Boodles; and at that moment Peter appeared in search of thoughts, heard the conversation, agreed that it was indeed cruel to go abroad on an empty stomach, and went to record the statement in his diary, adding for the sake of a light touch the observation of Boodles that she was not a snake, though Peter could not see the joke.