"It was my best and latest work," returned Noel, regarding the ceiling disconsolately. "A farmyard symphony with roulades and variations of the most realistic and spirited description, and would bring the house down at a Penny Reading. At present we had only reached the braying solo--but the chorus of turkeycocks, with peacock movement, would have created a sensation." "They have," returned Mollie, stealing softly behind him and treating him to a smart box on the ears; but Noel merely pinned her hands in a firm grasp and went on with his subject: little interruptions of this sort did not disturb him in the least; he rather liked them than otherwise. Nothing pleased him better than to get a rise out of his sisters, for, whatever virtues he possessed, he certainly lacked the bump of veneration. Dear, sweet Mollie, with her angelic face, was often addressed as "old Stick-in-the-mud," "Pegtop," or "the wobbly one," while Waveney, his special chum, the creature whom he loved best in the world next to his father, was "Storm and Stress," a singular soubriquet, evolved from her name and her sudden and sprightly movements. "For one is nearly blown away," he would say. "There is always a breeze through the house when that girl is in it; it is like playing a scale upside down and wrong side outwards to hear her coming downstairs;" and very often he would come to his meals with his collar up, and flourishing a red silk handkerchief ostentatiously, and speak in a croaking, nasal voice, until his father asked him mildly where he had caught such a cold; and then Waveney would nudge him furiously under the table. On the present occasion poor Mollie was kept in durance vile until Noel had finished his disquisition on his novel symphony; then he released her, and contemplated the tea-table with a fixed and glassy stare, which conveyed mute reproach. "Noel, dear, it is a fresh loaf," she said, hastily and apprehensively, "and it is beautifully crusty, and the butter is good--a penny a pound dearer, and at the best shop." "Where are the shrimps?" asked Noel, and he so lengthened the word that it sounded almost as terribly in Mollie's ears as Mrs. Siddons' "Give me the dagger!" for so much depends on expression, and if one is only melodramatic, even the words "shrimps" can be as sibilant and aggressive as the hissing of snakes. "Oh, dear, how tiresome you are, Noel!" returned Mollie, quite sharply for her, for she was housekeeper, and the strain and responsibility were overwhelming at times, especially when her poor little purse was empty. "I could not afford them, really, Noel," she continued, welling into tenderness at the thought of his disappointment. "There were some nice brown ones, but I dared not get them, for I had only twopence left, so I bought watercresses instead."