"Don't drink it if you don't like it," said Miss Billy, refusing to be friendly. "Like it! Why it's awful! It tastes like spruce gum and carbolic acid and chloroform all mixed up. Smell it, Miss Billy." "When you were little, mother used to wash your mouth with soap when you told falsehoods. It is probably some hazy recollection of that which is perverting your taste." Theodore was taking another cautious sip. "It's a little like sauerkraut, but it has the effervescence of soda water. It's the most curious stuff I ever tasted." Miss Billy unbent sufficiently to put her nose to the glass. "Why, it smells like yeast," she said wonderingly. "_That's_ what it is," said Theodore, snapping his fingers triumphantly. "I knew it wasn't chloroform or carbolic, but I couldn't just name it. It's yeast!" "But what can yeast be doing in the frappé?" questioned Miss Billy unbelievingly. Then as a sudden light broke upon her, she exclaimed, "Oh, Ted,--Beatrice must have gotten the yeast bottle instead of the Apollinaris water!--and for the Blanchard girls of all others! They are in there trying to drink it now. What shall we do?" "Nothing," said Theodore decidedly,--"they've drank it by this time. You watch how they will 'rise' to go. 'Sweets to the sweet,'--likewise yeast to the yeasty. Dear girls,--how airily their feet will spurn the pave. And it will do Miss Blanche good! She's as flat as an oatmeal cracker." "Theodore, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" Miss Billy was almost crying now. "Think of father when he hears all this,--and Beatrice's feelings,--and the awful remarks they will make about us----" "If you are looking for your handkerchief, you're sitting on it," said Theodore soberly. "Don't cry, Billy. I am going to father now and make a clean breast of the whole affair. There's no use staying to console Beatrice about the yeast. She'll have fifty sporadic spasms!"--and he strode from the room. "Oh, dear,--this has been a day of nothing but troubles," sighed Miss Billy, wiping her eyes,--"and I lost my temper the very first thing over a shoe-lace, and everything has gone crooked ever since. Poor Beatrice,--she tries to be so nice and ladylike,--and I know she will never get over this,--_never_!" CHAPTER VIII THE STORY OF HORATIUS "They held a council, standing Before the river gate. Short time was there, ye well may guess For musing or debate. Out spake the council roundly 'The bridge must straight go down, For since Janiculum is lost, Naught else can save the town.'" THE sun had risen early to get a good start, and at nine o'clock was shining down with relentless fury on Cherry Street. Theodore was wont to declare that the rain was wetter and the dew damper and the sun hotter on this street than in any other portion of the inhabited globe; and it was certainly true that the rows of small houses, unprotected by trees or awnings, did look unusually torrid in the broad glare of light.