In one day Buff played so many parts that it was difficult for his family to keep in touch with him. Sometimes he was grave and noble as befitted a knight of the Round Table, sometimes furtive and sly as a detective; again he was a highwayman, dauntless and debonair. To-night he was none of these things; to-night, in the rebound from a day's brooding on wrongs, he was frankly comic. He stood poised on one leg, in his mouth some sort of a whistle on which he performed piercingly until his father implored him to desist, when he removed the thing, and smiling widely on the company said, "But I must whistle. I'm 'the Wee Bird that cam'.'" Elizabeth and her father laughed, and Arthur asked, "_What_ does he say he is?" "It's a Jacobite song," Mr. Seton explained,--"'A wee bird cam' tae oor ha' door.' He's an absurd child." "Lessons done, Buff?" his sister asked him. "Surely the fowls of the air are exempt from lessons," Arthur protested; but Buff, remembering that although he had allowed himself to unbend for the moment, his wrongs were still there, said in a dignified way that he had learned his lessons, and having abstracted a cheese-cake from the tea-table, he withdrew to a table in a corner with his paint-box. As he mixed colours boldly he listened, in an idle way, to the conversation that engaged his elders. It sounded to him dull, and he wondered, as he had wondered many times before, why people chose the subjects they did when there was a whole world of wonders to talk about and marvel at. "Popularity!" Elizabeth was saying. "It's the easiest thing in the world to be popular. It only needs what Marget calls 'tack.' Appear always slightly more stupid than the person you are speaking to; always ask for information; never try to teach anybody anything; remember that when people ask for criticism they really only want praise. And of course you must never, never make personal remarks unless you have something pleasant to say. 'How tired you look!' simply means 'How plain you look!' It is so un-understanding of people to say things like that. If, instead of their silly, rude remarks, they would say, 'What a successful hat!' or 'That blue is delicious with your eyes!' and watch how even the most wilted people brighten and freshen, they wouldn't be such fools again. I don't want them to tell lies, but there is always _something_ they can praise truthfully."