she was shut up in her own room.

"No, mem, there's no fear. Not even such wild little reskels as ours
would climb out o' that high window, an' there ain't no other outlet
save it be the chimney. Not that I'd be surprised to see 'em one after
another creep out o' the chimney-pot black as black!" Euphemia, with
her head in the air, walked off muttering.

[Illustration]

However, as the morning wore on and a wondrous quiet reigned at the top
of the house, where the boys were engaged in painting fearsome animals
and golliwogs on the jambs of the mantelpiece, Euphemia relented.

"Mary Jane," said she to the good-tempered, red-elbowed help in the
kitchen, "you take up this plate o' gingerbread to the children. Pretty
dears, they must be nigh starving!" And a goodly heap of gingerbread
chunks travelled upstairs to the play-room, the door of which was
unlocked.

It was over this welcome interruption that a wonderful new game was
hatched.

"Clary, tell us about the mountain railway," said Oliver, seating
himself on the edge of the table to munch contentedly.

His little sister had spent the previous winter with her ailing Mother
in the Alps, at an hotel built on purpose for sick folk as high up in
the air as was possible. And the boys were never tired of listening to
her descriptions of the life so far up in the clouds and snows that the
sun was nearly always shining hotly.

"I shouldn't mind being sick myself if it was only just to wear those
funny snow-boots and walk over the hard snow up and down the
mountain-sides," said Mark, reaching out for another piece of
gingerbread.

"Oh, I'd like the tobogganing--the 'luging,' Clary calls it. Fancy
spinning down in the moonlight!" cried one of the smaller boys, Johnny.

"No! Give me the riskiest of all--that queer railway up and down the
great mountain. Tell us about it again, Clary," urged Oliver.

"That's called the funicular!" Very proud of being able to say the long
word, Clary propped up her every-day doll beside her in the
rocking-chair and, folding her mites of hands, proceeded to explain.

"It's quite a little young railway, y' know. It's only to take people up
to the hotel on top of the Mont, where Mother and I lived last winter."
Then she told the boys how the little train toiled up the sheer face of
a great mountain to the clouds. And it had to descend, also, which was
worse far. Clary shuddered and hid her blue eyes as she described that
coming down, while