I'll have!"

Life to Miss Frayne seemed to be one story after another. Well, it was
certainly becoming the same way to us.

"Did the ghost set fire to the house?" asked Beth.

"What are you all talking about," demanded Silvia, "and how did you
know these boys were there? How long have you been here?" she asked,
turning to Ptolemy.

"I told you," I repeated angrily to the subdued boy, "not to leave.
Those were plain orders. If the house did burn up, you could have
stayed in your tent in the woods."

Ptolemy's lips twitched faintly.

"The house burned up and all our clothes and our stuff to eat, and our
bats and things, and father and mother went away and I didn't know
what to do, so--I came here. But we'll go back to our own house. We
have learned to cook. Come on, boys."

"You'll stay right here with me, son," and Rob's hand came down
intimately on Ptolemy's shoulder.

"It isn't likely we'll turn them out into the woods, when they haven't
a roof over their heads," declared Silvia, drawing Emerald to her
side.

"I think you are absolutely inhuman, Lucien," cried Beth. "I don't see
what has changed you so," and she proceeded to make room for
Pythagoras in the porch swing.

"Did the fire scare you?" asked Miss Frayne gently, as she put her
arms about Demetrius.

"Et tu, Brute? Well, I plainly see this is no place for an inhuman,
childless, married man," I said with a laugh, walking down the
veranda.

In the doorway I met Diogenes, who raised his chubby arms invitingly.

"Up, up, Ocean!" he begged sweetly.

I lifted him to my shoulder, and then turned and walked triumphantly
back to the family group.

"Now," I said, "here is the whole d-dashed family. And I propose that
each keep unto his charge the child he has now under his wing."

Miss Frayne quickly relinquished the dirty Demetrius. Beth shrank away
from Pythagoras.

As I seated myself still holding Diogenes, his brothers sprang toward
him in greeting, but he spat at one, kicked at another, and pulled the
hair of a third, although he patted Ptolemy's cheek gently.

"Now, we'll have this affair thrashed out," I declared in my most
authoritative, professional manner, and I then proceeded to explain to
Silvia the housing of the Polydores, and our strategies to keep their
arrival a secret simply on her account.

"Because you know," interpolated Beth, with a consideration for the
feelings of the young Polydores--a consideration they had never befor