"Allan has a well-trained wife and a lock on his door," said John, who didn't in the least need to rehearse. "I have neither. Mother has made our house a happy hunting-ground, and at this moment Gail and Tiddy and Clarence are putting the Chorus of Peers through its paces. They aren't properly hand-picked. One of 'em squeaks." "They had to pick him, because he was so grand and tall," Joy explained. "He isn't supposed to sing. I suppose he got carried away." "Suppose you get carried away," coaxed John, returning to the charge. "Now, John, you know the thing is to be given in a week," remonstrated Joy. "And I have heaps to learn, and any amount more to sew." "Nevertheless--" said John, and suddenly laughed and tried to pick her up. He was very strong, and she was light and little, but she resisted valiantly. They were laughing and struggling like a couple of children, when they heard footsteps, and shamefacedly composed themselves to look very civilized. The choruses were all over the village at all times of the day and night after study hours, and John specially had to look after his decorum in their presence. But it was only Philip. "Seems to me it would be pleasanter," he remarked without preface, "if Angela and I had parts in this play. Angela thinks so, too." "Where is Angela?" asked Joy idly. "I put her up a tree," said Philip. "She's playing she's a little birdie. You haven't got any candy that we could play was worms, have you, Johnny?" he finished insinuatingly. But John and Joy had heard a wail in the direction whence Philip had come, and neither of them stopped to reply. Angela alone and up a tree was a picture that had appalling possibilities, and she was certainly crying as if the worst of them had happened. The wails seemed to come from the little pleasance where the fountain was, and Joy, as she ran, had a vision of a tree which Philip did climb with a ladder, and which he was quite capable of making Angela climb, too. The drop from his favorite limb was quite six feet. Joy reached the pleasance first. It was Angela who was shrieking, but the worst had not quite happened. She had wriggled herself out of the safe crotch where Philip had put her, and it was Heaven's mercy that she had not fallen. But her frock was a stout blue gingham, fortunately, and a projecting branch-stump was thrust through it, holding her in a horizontal position along the bough. She was crying and wriggling, and in another minute or so she might have fallen to the ground. There was a slight chance that she would have struck on the fountain. Joy was up the ladder and had the child in her arms in a moment. She held her till John, reaching up from below, relieved her of the burden, and set Angela on the grass, where she continued to cry. "Such a lot of crying about just a little hole in your frock!" remarked Philip to Angela. "I should think you'd be ashamed!" At which Angela stopped crying.