‘Oh, you should have heard Jane!’ cries Betty, going off into one of her peals of laughter. ‘When Aunt Jemima had reduced her to a rage, she came in weeping to me. All the forlorn hopes fall back upon me.’ ‘True, even this poor old forlorn one,’ says Dom promptly, seizing his opportunity to lift his head from her gown to drop it upon her lap. After which there is a scuffle. ‘Oh, never mind Dom!’ says Susan impatiently. ‘What did Jane say to you about the cup?’ ‘She said——Go away, Dom.’ ‘I’m sure she didn’t,’ says Dom, with an aggrieved air. ‘It’s an aspersion on my character, Susan. You don’t believe this, do you?’ ‘She said,’ goes on Betty, very properly taking no notice of the interruption: ‘“Law, Miss Betty, miss, did ye iver hear the like o’ that? Did ye iver hear such a row about nothin’?”’ ‘“It wasn’t about nothing,” I said; “because you know how even father valued that cup, though an uglier thing I never saw in my life.”’ ‘“Fegs, I don’t know what ye call anythin’,” said Jane (she was crying all the time; you know how she can roar); “but yer aunt herself tould me that that cup is a hundhred years ould if a day, an’ wid that to make sich a screech over it! Faix, it must have bin rotten wid age, miss; an’ no wondher it come to bits in me hands.”’ They are all delighted with the story. ‘I don’t think Aunt Jemima would have been so cross with poor Jane,’ says Susan, in a low tone and with a glance round her to make sure of no one’s being within hearing, ‘but for those eggs this morning.’ ‘The eggs under the speckled hen?’ asks Jacky; ‘I heard her speaking about them. Won’t they come out?’ Susan shakes her head, and Carew and Dominick edge a little out of sight. The latter, under a pretence of feeling too warm, hides his face under the big straw hat that Betty has thrown upon the grass beside her. ‘They should have come out ten days ago,’ says Susan; ‘but they’—she casts an uncertain glance at Carew, who has turned over and is now lying with his face upon his arms, and is evidently developing ague-fever—‘but they didn’t.’ ‘Were they all addled?’ asks Jacky, with amazement. ‘No; they were all boiled,’ says Susan. ‘Boiled!’ says little Bonnie, sitting up with an effort. ‘Who boiled them—the hen?’ At this there is a stifled roar from under Betty’s hat, whereupon the owner of it lifts it and discovers Mr. Fitzgerald plainly on the point of apoplexy. ‘Just the sort of thing one would expect from you,’ says she scornfully. ‘No wonder you want to hide your face; but you shan’t do it under my hat, anyhow.’ ‘Oh, Carew, think of that poor hen waiting and waiting for three weeks, and then for ten days more; I call it horrid,’ says Susan. ‘I really think you ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you two.’ ‘Ought we? Then we will be,’ says Dom; ‘never shall it be said that I shirked my duty, at all events. Carew, get out of that, and be ashamed of yourself instantly.’