"How very Irish! What good would that do, when the holes would still be there? It is most tiresome! It ruins the walls! It really—good gracious! Call your dog off!—Go _away_!" Miss Kezia, red-faced, undignified, was striving wildly to extricate her skirt from K.K.’s teeth. For a few moments Denis and Nell’s attention was engaged elsewhere; each was rearranging assiduously the folds of the cloth. And in the middle of it Sheila Pat sat and chuckled softly. Then Denis turned. "K.K., drop it!" he said sternly, and K.K. obeyed with a sad little wriggle. "It’s a most objectionable dog," Miss Kezia said breathlessly. "I insist that you make no more holes in my paper!" And she marched from the room. Denis sank on to the lounge, stuffed the cushion into his mouth, and wildly waved his legs in the air. The door reopened—Nell made a frantic dash at his legs. "Of course you understand that I will not have that guinea-pig brought into the house!" Miss Kezia said, her eyes on Denis, who at the sound of her voice dropped the cushion and sat up with a ludicrous face of dismay. She retired once more, and for a minute there was dead silence in the room she had left. Then Nell fell into Denis’s arms. "Oh—you gossoon!" On the floor, where she had been ignominiously dumped, Sheila Pat sat in her tablecloth and hugged Kate Kearney. Denis arose and seized her pig-tail. "Let’s attack the garden now, Atom." Nell was looking out of the window. "There’s that pretty little lame boy next door. I’m going down to talk to him." "I don’t want to come, thank you," Sheila Pat said to Denis. "Eh? Why not?" "A person," quoted the Atom, "may have reasons." "You’re a lazy Atom," said Denis, and strolled out of the room. "The little boy’s gone in," Molly observed. The Atom slipped out of the room and downstairs after Denis. Denis sat on an old up-turned wheelbarrow and studied a book on shorthand and the garden alternately. "It’s a problem that requires a good deal of thought," he observed lazily. "A back yard: Item—a patch of bare ground adorned with ten and a half blades of grass. Item—a narrow ridge of clay running parallel with the walls, in which flowers are presumably meant to grow. Item—a careless mosaic of china, etc. Item—a wheelbarrow. Item—a dustbin. Item—a diminutive Atom ready to turn it all into an elysium of sweet flowers." "Go on with your readin’," said the Atom, refusing to smile, and valiantly beginning to pick up bits of china. "The spirit is willing, but the brain is weak. I’ve come to a standstill. Hulloa, K.K.’s over the wall!" "It was a cat makin’ faces at her. If that little boy’s there, he’ll be very frightened." "Why on earth should he be?" "Oh, I know he will," with dire meaning. Nell came dancing out into the garden with Molly. "You’re out of step, Mol! Kate Kearney, I saw you leap the wall after a poor pussy!" She dug her toes into the wall and looked over.