"Must it be all out of my own head?" Miss King hesitated. "No, if you can remember one that you've read that the others don't know, that would do." Maudie looked relieved. "_I_ don't need to remember one," said Hoodie. "I know such heaps. My head's all spinning full of them." "So's mine," said Duke, jumping about and clapping his hands. "And mine too," said Hec. "Kite 'pinning full." "What nonsense," said Hoodie. "You _don't_ know stories. It's only me that does." "Hush, hush," said Miss King. "My plan won't be nice at all if it makes you quarrel. Now I _must_ run down." The children were very quiet through breakfast time. Every now and then the little boys leant over across their bowls of bread and milk to whisper to each other. "Wouldn't that be lovely?" or "That'd be a vezy pitty story," till called to order by Martin, who told them that spilling their breakfast over the table would not be at all a good beginning to the stories. "'Twouldn't matter," remarked Hoodie, philosophically. "The cloth isn't clean; it's Saturday, you know, Martin." "Saturday or no Saturday," replied Martin, "it isn't pretty for little ladies and gentlemen to spill their food on the table. And it gets them in the habit of it for when they get big and have their breakfasts and dinners down-stairs." "Doesn't big people _never_ spill things on the cloth?" inquired Hec, solemnly. "Mr. Fielding does," said Hoodie. "One day when he was here at luncheon, he was helping Mamma to wine, and he poured all down the outside of her glass. I think he's dedfully ugly. I wouldn't like ever to be a big people if I was to be like him." "Miss Hoodie," remonstrated Martin, hardly approving of the turn the conversation was taking, "do get on with your breakfast, and you'd better be thinking about your stories than talking about things you don't understand." Hoodie glanced at Martin with considerable contempt. "I'd like to make a story about Beauty and the Beast," she said. "I know who'd be the beast, but _you_ shouldn't be Beauty, Martin." "Shouldn't I, Miss Hoodie?" said Martin, good-naturedly. "Miss King would make a nice Beauty, to my mind." Almost as she spoke the door opened, and Cousin Magdalen re-appeared. "Children," she said, "your mother says we may have the fire lighted in the billiard-room because it is such a chilly day, so I am going to take my work there and you may all come. Martin will be glad to get rid of you, because I know Saturday's a busy morning for her always." The news was received with great satisfaction, and before the end of another half-hour the four children were all under their cousin's charge in the billiard-room, for an hour or two, greatly to Martin's relief. "What pretty work you are doing, Cousin Magdalen," said Maudie, stroking admiringly the large canvas stretched on a frame at which Miss King was working.