written and
folded, and the papers were shuffled and opened amid outcries of,
"O, this is awful!" "_What_ a word to get in!" "Why, they haven't
the least thing to do with each other!"

"That's the beauty of it," said Miss Craydocke, unrelentingly; "to
_make_ them have; and it is funny how much things do have to do with
each other when they once happen to come across."

Then there were knit brows, and desperate scratchings, and such
silence that Mr. Geoffrey and Uncle Titus stopped short on the
Alabama question, and looked round to see what the matter was.

Kenneth Kincaid had been modestly listening to the older gentlemen,
and now and then venturing to inquire or remark something, with an
intelligence that attracted Mr. Geoffrey; and presently it came out
that he had been south with the army; and then Mr. Geoffrey asked
questions of him, and they got upon Reconstruction business, and
comparing facts and exchanging conclusions, quite as if one was not
a mere youth with only his eyes and his brains and his conscience to
help him in his first grapple with the world in the tangle and
crisis at which he found it, and the other a grave, practiced,
keen-judging man, the counsellor of national leaders.

After all, they had no business to bring the great, troublesome,
heavy-weighted world into a child's party. I wish man never would;
though it did not happen badly, as it all turned out, that they did
a little of it in this instance. If they had thought of it,
"Crambo" was good for them too, for a change; and presently they did
think of it; for Dorris called out in distress, real or pretended,
from the table,--

"Kentie, here's something you must really take off my hands! I
haven't the least idea what to do with it."

And then came a cry from Hazel,--

"No fair! We're all just as badly off, and there isn't one of us
that has got a brother to turn to. Here's another for Mr. Kincaid."

"There are plenty more. Come, Mr. Oldways, Mr. Geoffrey, won't you
try 'Crambo?' There's a good deal in it, as there is in most
nonsense."

"We'll come and see what it is," said Mr. Geoffrey; and so the
chairs were drawn up, and the gray, grave heads looked on over the
young ones.

"Why, Hazel's got through!" said Lois, scratching violently at her
paper, and obliterating three obstinate lines.

"O, I didn't bother, you see! I just stuck the word right in, like a
pin into a pincushion, and let it go. There wasn't anything else to
do w