When his friends found him there was blood on his forehead. Harry thought it was where the Dragon had clawed him, but they said it was a cut from a fragment of the broken brandy bottle. The Dragons had disappeared as completely as the brandy. Harry was cured of snapping. He had had quite enough of it for a lifetime, and the catch contradictions of the household now made him shudder. Polly had not had the benefit of his experiences, and yet she improved also. In the first place, snapping, like other kinds of quarrelling, requires two parties to it, and Harry would never be a party to snapping any more. And when he gave civil and kind answers to Polly's smart speeches, she felt ashamed of herself, and did not repeat them. In the second place, she heard about the Snap-Dragons. Harry told all about it to her and to the hot-tempered gentleman. "Now do you think it's true?" Polly asked the hot-tempered gentleman. "Hum! Ha!" said he, driving his hands through his hair. "You know I warned you you were going to the Snap-Dragons." * * * * * Harry and Polly snubbed "the little ones" when they snapped, and utterly discountenanced snapping in the nursery. The example and admonitions of elder children are a powerful instrument of nursery discipline, and before long there was not a "sharp tongue" among all the little Skratdjs. But I doubt if the parents ever were cured. I don't know if they heard the story. Besides, bad habits are not easily cured when one is old. I fear Mr. and Mrs. Skratdj have yet got to dance with the Dragons. UNCLE JACK'S STORY By Mrs. E. M. Field "Once upon a time," began Uncle Jack, "since we know no fairy stories are worth hearing unless they begin with 'once upon a time.' "Once upon a time there was a country ruled over by a king and queen who had no children. Having no children of their own, these sovereigns thought other people's children a nuisance. I am afraid they were like the fox, who said the grapes were sour because he could not reach them, for it was well-known that they wanted some of these 'torments' very badly themselves." "Don't call us torments, Uncle Jack," interrupted his little niece. "Well, you see, madam, historians must be truthful. I am bound to say that the king and queen passed a law in which the children were described as 'pickles, torments, plagues, bothers, nuisances, worries,' and by twenty-four other titles of respect which I have forgotten. This law enacted: "First--That the children were to be seen and not heard. Wherefore all children under the age of sixteen were to speak in a whisper and laugh in a whisper." "They couldn't, Uncle Jack," broke in Bryda, "they could only smile!" "Or grin," said Uncle Jack. "So you think that a cruel law, Bryda?