She broke off; she turned to him on the last stair, hung on to his arm. "Denis, if only, _only_ we might tell them! My hair fairly rises with the weight of the secret! I know Sheila Pat is wondering what has come to us!" "Eileen, come in to breakfast!" They went in. On the table there lay a great pile of letters. Molly and the Atom came hurrying in; Denis tossed letters to them all, and kept a few himself. "I cannot understand why there are so many letters this morning," Miss Kezia observed. She looked round the table, surprised. "Why do you not open them?" she asked. "Anticipation is the soul of wit!" observed Denis, absurdly. They fingered their letters, laughing, glancing at each other. "Have you all gone mad?" Miss Kezia demanded. "That’s a good suggestion," Denis opined thoughtfully. "They do look somewhat abbreviated in the top story. As for me, I will open my letters at one minute past twelve, noon." He airily tucked them away in an inner pocket. "I request an explanation of these horribly addressed letters!" Miss Kezia cried. The laughter broke out hilariously. Denis stretched out, picked up one of Sheila Pat’s letters, and eyed it with pride. "I thought that rather good," he observed. "Look at the curly little heads, and those tricky Greek _e_’s!" "Molly!" Miss Kezia turned to her with an air of finality, "Molly, will _you_ vouchsafe me an explanation?" Molly, at once proud and horrified, plunged forthwith:— "Oh, yes, Aunt Kezia, you see, it’s April the first, and you’re a fool if you don’t know it—" She made an unfortunate pause, flustered by a burst of laughter. Miss Kezia’s cheek reddened a little. "Molly, your language—" "Oh, no! Oh, I didn’t mean that! I mean that if you don’t know it, you get caught, and if you do, you don’t, and—and—you see—we wrote letters to each other—we didn’t know the others were remembering the date, too, and of course if it had been our own handwriting we’d have known, you see. So we disguised them, and we can’t open them before twelve or we’ll be fools." She stopped, out of breath. Miss Kezia said slowly:— "Do you mean that you have wasted all those stamps, that paper, those envelopes, on a ridiculous childish game? That you have thrown away honest pennies on such tom-foolery?" She proceeded to deliver a lecture on thrift which lasted throughout breakfast. Just before Denis started for the bank, a telegram came for Nell. Sarah brought it up to the Stronghold. She looked at Nell with scared pity in her face. "It’s for you, miss!" Nell seized it, tore it open, burst out laughing. "I’m caught! It’s from Moira McCarthy! Oh, I _wish_ I could catch her!" She crumpled it up and threw it at Denis. Sheila Pat picked it up and studied it.