t, if they did come, it's
something to feel we should be able to defend ourselves.'

'Yes, Hilary,' Cecily remarked, 'an army would certainly be a great
convenience then.'

'That would depend on what it did,' said her sister. 'It wouldn't be
much of a convenience if it ran away.'

'I don't think Jack and Guy would ever do that,' observed Hazel.

'I suppose that means that you think I should?' inquired Clarence, who
was quick at discovering personal allusions.

'I wasn't thinking about you at all,' said Hazel, with supreme
indifference; 'we don't know you well enough to say whether you're brave
or not--we do know our brothers.'

'There wouldn't be much sense in my being the General if I wasn't the
bravest, would there?' he demanded.

'Well, as to that, you see,' retorted Hilary, 'we don't see much sense
in any of it.'

'Girls can't be expected to see sense in anything,' he said sulkily.

'At all events, no one can be expected to see bravery till there's some
danger,' said Hazel; 'and there isn't the least!'

'That's all you know about it; but I've something more important to do
than stay here squabbling. I'm off to see what the army's up to.' And he
marched off with great pomp.

When he had disappeared, Hilary remarked frankly, 'Isn't he a pig?'

'I don't think it's nice to call our visitors "pigs," Hilary!'
remonstrated Cecily, 'and he's not really more greedy than most boys.'

'Don't lecture, Cis. I didn't mean he was that kind of pig--I said he
was a pig. And he is!' said Hilary, not over lucidly. 'I wonder what
Jack and Guy can see in him. I thought that when they wrote asking him
to be invited, that he'd be sure to be such a jolly boy!'

'He may be a jolly boy--at school,' was all that even the tolerant
Cecily could find to urge in his favour.

'I believe,' said Hazel, 'that they're not nearly so mad about him as
they were--didn't you notice about the tennis just now?'

'He bullies them--that's what it is,' explained Hilary; 'only with
talking, I mean, of course, but he talks such a lot, and he will have
his own way, and, if they say anything, he reminds them he's a visitor,
and ought to be humoured. I wish it was any use getting Uncle Lambert to
speak to him--but he's so stupid!'

'Is he, though?' said a lazy voice from behind the cedar.

'Oh, Uncle Lambkin!' cried Hilary, 'I didn't know you were there!'

'Don't apologise,' was the answer. 'I know it must be a trial to have an
uncle on the ve