Janet waited until she was well away from the library before she asked what a fishing pond was. She was used to doing all the explaining and all of the leading when it came to playing with other girls, she had played so seldom with them, and this new and scornful attitude of the Blakes made her unreasonably angry. She knew that if she were competing in climbing trees or rowing--anything that took courage--she would be their superior. But when it was a question of sewing, she had to admit herself beaten. The thought made her very unhappy, for above everything else in the world Janet wanted to be like other girls. Not the Blake girls, but the girl heroines she had read of and dreamed of as friends in her Kingdom. Mrs. Todd noticed the worried expression on her face and did her best to dispell it by giving her something else to think about. "A fish pond," she explained in answer to her question, "is a very easy way of making people spend money. You put up a screen and sell little wooden fish poles for ten cents. The buyer goes fishing over the screen and some one ties a present to the end of the line." Mrs. Todd watched Janet closely, and laughed with delight as the frown deepened on her face. "Well?" she inquired, "what do you think of it!" "Not very much," Janet answered truthfully. "Isn't there a better way?" "I should think there would be,"--Mrs. Todd chuckled. "If you can suggest one we'll change it and surprise them all." "Why not let them really fish?" "In water! What would you have them catch? Pincushions and tidies wouldn't be improved by a ducking." Janet thought for a minute. They were in the Sunday-school rooms, and she was sitting perched up on the high platform. "Why can't they catch things that come from the sea!" she suggested. "What, for instance!" "Oh, shells and coral and fishes and stones. They are every bit as sensible as pincushions and so much prettier." "No doubt about that,"--Mrs. Todd laughed--"but where shall we get them?" "Oh, we have just loads of them up in the attic; queer old shells from all over the world that my great-grandfather, I think it was, brought home with him." "But, my child, you can't give those away," Mrs. Todd protested. "Why not?" "Your grandmother--" "Oh, she wouldn't mind; she can't bear them. You know, she hates anything that reminds her of the water." Janet looked at her companion wonderingly. "Queer, isn't it?" she said. Mrs. Todd looked at her with a peculiar light in her steely eyes. "Not under the circumstances," she said softly, but though Janet waited she did not say any more. "I asked grandmother once, oh, long ago, if I might play with those shells,"--Janet returned to the subject in hand--"and she said I might do anything I liked with them as long as I kept them out of her sight." Mrs. Todd seemed to consider the idea. Finally she said,