osses?" said Clara. "Or may I count the
three-cross pictures among the two-cross pictures?"

"Of course you may," said her aunt. "Any one, that has _three_ eyes, may
be said to have _two_ eyes, I suppose?"

Clara followed her aunt's dreamy gaze across the crowded gallery,
half-dreading to find that there was a three-eyed person in sight.

"And you must give one cross to nine or ten."

"And which wins the match?" Clara asked, as she carefully entered these
conditions on a blank leaf in her catalogue.

"Whichever marks fewest pictures."

"But suppose we marked the same number?"

"Then whichever uses most marks."

Clara considered. "I don't think it's much of a match," she said. "I
shall mark nine pictures, and give three crosses to three of them, two
crosses to two more, and one cross each to all the rest."

"Will you, indeed?" said her aunt. "Wait till you've heard all the
conditions, my impetuous child. You must give three oughts to one or two
pictures, two oughts to three or four, and one ought to eight or nine. I
don't want you to be _too_ hard on the R.A.'s."

Clara quite gasped as she wrote down all these fresh conditions. "It's a
great deal worse than Circulating Decimals!" she said. "But I'm
determined to win, all the same!"

Her aunt smiled grimly. "We can begin _here_," she said, as they paused
before a gigantic picture, which the catalogue informed them was the
"Portrait of Lieutenant Brown, mounted on his favorite elephant."

"He looks awfully conceited!" said Clara. "I don't think he was the
elephant's favorite Lieutenant. What a hideous picture it is! And it
takes up room enough for twenty!"

"Mind what you say, my dear!" her aunt interposed. "It's by an R.A.!"

But Clara was quite reckless. "I don't care who it's by!" she cried.
"And I shall give it three bad marks!"

Aunt and niece soon drifted away from each other in the crowd, and for
the next half-hour Clara was hard at work, putting in marks and rubbing
them out again, and hunting up and down for suitable pictures. This she
found the hardest part of all. "I _can't_ find the one I want!" she
exclaimed at last, almost crying with vexation.

"What is it you want to find, my dear?" The voice was strange to Clara,
but so sweet and gentle that she felt attracted to the owner of it, even
before she had seen her; and when she turned, and met the smiling looks
of two little old ladies, whose round dimpled faces, exactly alike,
seemed never to