d, and I am afraid my
strong-mindedness went to the winds, and I shrieked like any
bread-and-butter miss, at least George assured me so afterwards. Cathy
had the presence of mind to fling her dress over her head, while the
boys made a valiant though fruitless effort to slay those within
immediate reach.

"Oh, I say!" cried Edward. "This is no joke! They're all pouring out of
the museum. We'd better cut, or there'll be damage done!"

And we beat an ignominious retreat, leaving our tea cooling upon the
table, and the hornets in clear possession of the school-room. The
question of how to get rid of them presented some difficulty, it being
an unequal match to war with wasps; but in the end a tray full of
burning sulphur was thrust through the door, and allowed to smoulder
for some hours, after which we were at length able to enter in safety,
and sweep up the bodies of our victims in triumph from the floor.

Somehow poor Dick's experiments did not always turn out very happily, in
spite of the best intentions on his part. Fired by an article in a boys'
magazine, he once volunteered to stuff a dead bullfinch which Cathy had
found in the garden, and after a long operation of skinning and drying,
he produced it in the school-room with great pride.

"Doesn't it look a little fatter on one side than on the other?"
suggested Cathy, doubtfully surveying the bullfinch, which was wired
upon a twig as no bird in real life had ever perched.

"Nonsense!" said Dick, pinching his specimen to send the stuffing
straight. "It's just exactly as if it were pecking at a bud. Look at its
eyes! I made them out of two black-headed pins I took from the mater's
bonnet."

"I don't think its tail looks quite natural," said Cathy. "It seems
somehow to stick up like a wren's."

"Well, if you're going to find fault," answered Dick indignantly, "just
try and do one yourself, that's all. It's jolly difficult, I can tell
you, and I've taken no end of trouble over it."

"Oh, I'm not finding fault!" said Cathy hastily. "I think it's ever so
nice, and you're a dear boy to do it for me. We might bend the tail down
a little--so! That's better. Now it looks splendid, and we'll give it a
front place in the collection."

"All right!" said Dick, somewhat mollified. "But you girls seem to think
these things are as easy as eating cakes. It takes practice even to skin
a sparrow, as you'd soon find out if you'd ever tried your hand at it."

The bullfinch was