"Allow me!" he says, bowing, and making me bow, too, "to introduce you to the future legatee!--Barbara, my child, you and I are _nowhere_. This depraved old man has clearly no feeling for symmetry of form or face; a long career of Begums has utterly vitiated his taste. To-morrow he will probably be clamoring for Tou Tou's company." "Brat!" says Barbara, laughing, "where has the analogy between me and the man who pulled up the window in the train for the old woman gone to?" "Mother said I was to look as nice as I could," say I, casting a rueful glance at the tea-board, at the large plum loaf, at the preparations for temperate conviviality. I have sat down on the threadbare blue-and-red hearth-rug, and am shading my face with a pair of cold pink hands, from the clear, quick blaze. "What _am_ I to wear?" I say, gloomily. "None of my frocks are ironed, and there is no time now. I shall look as if I came out of the dirty clothes-basket! Barbara, dear, will you lend me your blue sash? Last time I wore mine the Brat upset the gum-bottle over my ends." "Let us each have the melancholy pleasure of contributing something toward the decking of our victim," says Algy, with a grin; "have my mess-jacket!" "Have as many beads as you can about you," puts in Bobby. "Begums always have plenty of beads." A little pause, while the shifting flame-light makes small pictures of us on the deep-bodied teapot's sides, and throws shadowy profiles of us on the wall. "Mother said, too, that I was to try and not say any of my unlucky things!" I remark, presently. "Do not tell him," says Bobby, ill-naturedly, "as you told poor Captain Saunders the other day, that 'they always put the fool of the family into the army.'" "I did not say so of myself," cry I, angrily. "I only told it him as a quotation." "Abstain from quotations, then," retorts Bobby, dryly; "for you know in conversation one does not see the inverted commas." "What _shall_ I talk about?" say I, dropping my shielding hand into my lap, and letting the full fire-warmth blaze on eyes, nose, and cheeks. "Barbara, what _did_ you talk about?" "Whatever I talked about," replies Barbara, gayly, "they clearly were not successful topics, so I will not reveal what they were." Barbara is standing by the tea-table, thin and willowy, a tea-caddy in one hand, and a spoon in the other, ladling tea into the deep-bodied pot--a spoonful for each person and one for the pot. "I will draw you up a list of subjects to be avoided," says Algy, drawing his chair to the table, and pulling a pencil out of his waistcoat-pocket. "Here, Tou Tou, tear a leaf out of your copy-book--imprimis, _old age_." "You are wrong there," cry I, triumphantly, "_quite_ wrong; he is rather fond of talking of his age, harps upon it a good deal. He said to-day that he was an _old wreck_!" "Of course he meant you to contradict him!" says Bobby, cackling, "and, from the little I know of you, I am morally certain that you did not--_did_ you, now?"