everybody should know of them?"

"'Done'? I don't know as they've done anything. It's what they are. They
are very rich and aristocratic people. Why, the Pelhams belong to one of
the oldest families of Boston."

"What do I care for that?" said Tilly, tipping her head backward until
it bumped against the wall of the house with a sounding bang, whereat
Dora Robson gave a little giggle and exclaimed,--

"Mercy, Tilly, I heard it crack!"

Then another girl giggled,--it was another of the Robsons,--Dora's
Cousin Amy; and after the giggle she said saucily,--

"Tilly's head is full of cracks already. I think we'd better call her
'Crack Brain;' we'll put it C.B., for short."

"You'd better call her L.H.,--'Level Head,'" a voice--a boy's
voice--called out here.

The group of girls looked at one another in startled surprise.
"Who--what!" Then Dora Robson, glancing over the piazza railing,
exclaimed,--

"It's Will Wentworth. He's in the hammock! What do you mean, Willie, by
hiding up like that, right under our noses, and listening to our
secrets?"

"Hiding up? Well, I like that! I'd been out here for half an hour or
more when you girls came to this end of the piazza."

"What in the world have you been doing for an hour in a hammock? I
didn't know as you could keep still so long. Oh, you've got a book. Let
me see it."

"You wouldn't care anything about it; it's a boy's book."

"Let me see it."

Will held up the book.

"Oh, 'Jack Hall'!"

"Of course, I knew you wouldn't care anything for a book that's full of
boy's sports," returned Will.

"I know one girl that does," responded Dora, laughing and nodding her
head.

"Who is she?" asked Will, looking incredulous.

"'T ain't me," answered Dora, more truthfully than grammatically.

"No, I guess not; and I guess you don't know any such girl."

Dora wheeled around and called, "Tilly, Tilly Morris! Come here and
prove to this conceited, contradicting boy that I'm telling the truth."

"Oh, it's Tilly Morris, eh?" sung out Will.

"Yes," answered Tilly, turning and looking down at the occupant of the
hammock; "I think 'Jack Hall' is the jolliest kind of a book. I've read
it twice."

Will jerked himself up into a sitting posture, as he ejaculated in
pleased astonishment,--

"Come, I say now!"

"Yes," went on Tilly; "I think it's one of the best books I ever
read,--that part about the boat-race I've read over three or four
times."

"Well, your head _is_ lev