"I'm not so sure of that; you know what extraordinary things they tell you are intended to represent things which are not in the least bit like them. Where's that paper? Jack, give me that paper." Jack gave it her. She glanced at it. "'Right'--I'll take up a position like you did last night, Mr. Graham, to the right of the door; 'cat--dog--cat--dog--cat--dog--cat--dog--' now----" "Well?" queried Madge, for Ella had stopped. "Now what?" "I think," continued Ella, with evident dubitation, "that I'll again do what you did last night, Mr. Graham, and cross right over; though it says nothing about it here, but perhaps that was omitted on purpose." She marched straight across the room. "Now we'll take the first thing upon the beading, or whatever it is, to be a cat, and we'll count them alternately--cat--dog--the fifth dog." "Very good," said Graham, standing close up to the wall and pointing with his outstretched hand, "Cat--dog--cat--dog--cat--dog--cat--dog--here you are." "Now, 'left eye--push.'" "Or shove," suggested Jack. "But there is no eye--whether left or otherwise." "That's a detail," murmured Jack. "Let me see." Ella clambered on to a chair. From that position of vantage she examined the protuberances in question. "There really does seem nothing which could represent an eye; the things look more like knuckle-bones than anything else." "What's the odds? Let's all get hammers and whack the whole jolly lot of them in the eye, or where, if right is right, it ought to be. And then, if nothing happens--and we'll hope to goodness nothing will--we'll whack 'em again." "I'm afraid, Ella," put in Madge, "that your cats and dogs are merely suppositions. I vote, by way of doing something practical, that we start stripping the wainscot. You'll find hiding-places enough' behind that, and it's quite on the cards, something in them." "Certainly," assented Jack, "I am on. Bring out your hatchets, pickaxes, crowbars, and other weapons of war, and we'll turn up our shirt-sleeves, and shiver our timbers, and not leave one splinter of wood adhering to another. Buck up, Graham! Take off your coat, my boy! You're going to begin to enjoy yourself at last, I give you my word." Ella, possibly slightly exacerbated by the failure of her little suggestion, endeavoured to snub the exuberant Mr. Martyn. "I don't know if you think you're funny, Jack, because you're only silly. If you can't be serious, perhaps you'd better go; then, if we do find something, you'll have no share." "Upon my Sam!" cried Jack, "if that ain't bitter hard. If there's any sharing going on, I don't care what it is, if there's any man who wants his bit of it more than I do, I should like you to point him out. Ella, my dearest Ella, I do assure you, by the token of those peerless charms----" "Jack, don't be silly." "I think," insinuated Madge, "that you and I, Mr. Graham, had better go and fetch a chisel and a hammer."