ven tea would be forgotten.

At last, however, the delightful moment had arrived, when the children
were all seated round the table and at liberty to recount their
afternoon's occupations. Of course, Madge's adventures were altogether
so out of the common as to throw everything else into the shade. The
twins said nothing about their meeting with Lewis, and Madge never
thought of inquiring what they had been doing. They did not
intentionally conceal anything, but in the excitement of hearing about
the loss and recovery of the brown bag they completely forgot what, up
to that time, had been a great source of pride--namely, that they had
been associating on equal terms of friendship with a big school-boy.
Even when tea was over and Miss Thompson left them alone, they forgot
to tell Madge how they had spent the afternoon, in the interest of
looking at the new purchases.

"Well, I suppose all's well that ends well," remarked Betty solemnly,
as she helped to unpack the brown paper parcels on the schoolroom
table. "Only it must have been very terrible in that cellar,
especially when you saw those flaming eyes in the dark! What colour
were they, green or yellow?"

"Oh, I hardly remember! The colour of cats' eyes, I suppose!" replied
Madge rather impatiently.

She did not much care to dwell upon that time in the cellar, when she
had mistaken the poor starved kitten for some sort of hobgoblin, and
screamed at it in a way that was most unworthy of her age and good
sense. To change the subject, she asked John how he liked the things
she had chosen for him.

"The ship is all right," he said slowly, "and so is the whip. At least
it's not quite so big as the one I got last time, and it cost a penny
more, but still it will do. Only--"

"Well, what's the matter?" interrupted Madge. "What have you got to
grumble at now, I should like to know?"

She spoke sharply, for, with all her kindness, she could not bear to
have the younger ones finding fault with anything she did. So long as
they were duly grateful she would work hard to amuse them; but the
moment they began to criticise her conduct in any way there was trouble.

"Do you think you could have chosen anything better yourself?" she said
scornfully. "You had better try next time if you think it's so easy!"

"I didn't say the things were not nice things," observed John in his
quiet obstinate way. "I never meant that. Only I can't understand how
you spent our mon