"How can I sing with that wretched electric bell going on all the
time?"

"Tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r," sounded shrilly through the room,
louder and louder.

"Electric bell?" exclaimed the children with blank faces.

"Oh, you dear new chum," said Mr. Orban, bursting into peals of
laughter, accompanied by Bob, "that isn't an electric bell; it's a
cicada."

"A cicada!" repeated Miss Chase.

"Yes; a kind of grasshopper, or cricket, you know," Mrs. Orban
explained, looking much amused. "He is up there in the roof. I am
afraid you will have to stop, for as long as you go on so will
he."

"How very ill-mannered of him," said Miss Chase.

"Let's play something instead," said Peter, who was getting sleepy,
but would not own it.

He was not really fond of music--Bob's comic songs excepted.

The game was begun, and going merrily, when suddenly there rose on
the night air such an appalling howl that Miss Chase started and
turned pale. To her astonishment, when she looked round the table,
she found that no one but herself was at all disturbed by the
sound.

"You to play, I believe, Miss Chase," said Bob, who sat opposite
her.

She put down her card, and at that moment the agonized cry came
again, apparently from immediately under the veranda. Dorothy
gripped her hands tightly together, and again looked round on the
unmoved faces. Again the cry resounded.

"Surely," she said, looking appealingly at Bob, "there is something
or some one in dreadful pain outside."

Bob laughed.

"I thought you seemed upset, but I didn't like to mention it," he
said. "That's nothing but a dingo howling. There'll be a whole pack
of them at it presently, I dare say. I'll go out and disperse them
as soon as the game is over."

"What is a dingo?" inquired Miss Chase.

"Don't you know that, Aunt Dorothy?" asked Peter in tones of
contemptuous astonishment. "Well, it's the commonest thing here."

"Peter," said Bob gravely, "do you know what a top hat and a frock
coat are like?"

Peter shook his head in bewilderment.

"Don't you?" said Bob, mimicking the small boy's tone. "Well,
they're the commonest things in England. I am surprised at your
ignorance!"

Peter reddened.

"But I've never seen them," he said.

"Nor has Miss Chase ever seen a dingo," said Bob calmly.--"It is
the wild dog of the Bush, Miss Chase. They come prowling round the
house at night, looking for food."

The howling grew worse and worse. Bob quietly saunt