"Come here, then, Barby," cried the boy; "I'll make you '_ferstand_.'" "So I'm the one in the way," said Grace, quickly; "you're so mightily mysterious, all of a sudden, Horace!" "Good evening, Grace," said Robert Sherwood, appearing at the door; "what about the prize?" "O, dear, I don't know, Robin." "What think I heard? That the trial would lie between two of you girls--Grace Clifford and Mahla Linck." Grace flushed to the temples. Then other people thought that, as well as the school-girls. "What are you doing, Grace?" said Horace, returning from the dining-room, and eying his sister's writing-desk with some curiosity. "Writing a letter, or trying to," replied Grace, flourishing her pen nervously in the air. "Why is your letter like the equator?" said Robert. "Equator? Don't know. Can't stop to guess conundrums." "Because it's only an imaginary line." "My letter? O, Robin, how smart! It always will be imaginary, I reckon, while you boys stand there looking at me. Do, please, let me alone!" "O, good by, South Carolina," said Robert, bowing. "I'm off." "Good by, Car'line," echoed little Horace, with a patronizing sweep of his thumb. Grace returned to her writing, her feelings still somewhat ruffled. She had proceeded as far as "I want to see you more than tongue can tell," when Horace burst into the room again with a second message to Barbara. "Is there, or is there not, a place in this house where a body can go to write a letter?" cried Grace, rising and pushing back her paper. But her remark was unheeded. Barbara and Horace went on whispering together, and seemed to be enjoying their little secret, whatever it might be. Grace's nerves were quivering from the day's excitement. "I'm not cross," thought she. "O, no, not cross; but I'd like to give that boy a good shaking. It's not my temper, it's my 'nervous system.' The doctor said my nervous system was torn to pieces by the chills." Grace would never forget this unfortunate remark of her physician. But she was a sensible girl, and it suddenly occurred to her that her "nervous system" could never go to scolding unless she opened her mouth. Bitter, sharp words sprang to her tongue; but if her tongue was only "kept between her teeth," the words couldn't fly out. "I'll just 'lock my lips,'" mused Grace, "for, as ma says, 'A spoken word no chariot can overtake, though it be drawn by four swift horses.'" Tedious little Horace at last made an end of his story, and left the kitchen whistling either Dixie or Yankee Doodle, no mortal could tell which; for out of Horace's mouth they were one and the same thing. Barbara seated herself, and resumed her knitting. She usually nodded over that black stocking as drowsily as if it had been a treatise on philosophy, or something quite as stupid; but to-night she was painfully wide awake. "O, my patience!" thought Grace; "can't she look at anything but me?"