argin showed some faint red
marks.

"Well, I never," Mr. Jellicorse exclaimed--"certainly never saw these
marks before. Diana, where are my glasses?"

Mrs. Jellicorse had been to see the potatoes on (for the new cook simply
made "kettlefuls of fish" of every thing put upon the fire), and now at
her husband's call she went to her work-box for his spectacles, which
he was not allowed to wear except on Sundays, for fear of injuring his
eyesight. Equipped with these, and drawing nearer to the window, the
lawyer gradually made out this: first a broad faint line of red, as if
some attorney, now a ghost, had cut his finger, and over against that in
small round hand the letters "v. b. c." Mr. Jellicorse could swear that
they were "v. b. c."

"Don't ask me to eat any dinner to-day," he exclaimed, when his wife
came to fetch him. "Diana, I am occupied; go and eat it up without me."

"Nonsense, James," she answered, calmly; "you never get any clever
thoughts by starving."

Moved by this reasoning, he submitted, fed his wife and children and
own good self, and then brought up a bottle of old Spanish wine to
strengthen the founts of discovery. Whose writing was that upon the
broad marge of verbosity? Why had it never been observed before? Above
all, what was meant by "v. b. c."?

Unaided, he might have gone on forever, to the bottom of a butt of Xeres
wine; but finding the second glass better than the first, he called to
Mrs. Jellicorse, who was in the garden gathering striped roses, to come
and have a sip with him, and taste the yellow cherries. And when she
came promptly, with the flowers in her hand, and their youngest little
daughter making sly eyes at the fruit, bothered as he was, he could not
help smiling and saying, "Oh, Diana, what is 'v. b. c.'?"

"Very black currants, papa!" cried Emily, dancing a long bunch in the
air.

"Hush, dear child, you are getting too forward," said her mother, though
proud of her quickness. "James, how should I know what 'v. b. c.' is?
But I wish most heartily that you would rid me of my old enemy, box C.
I want to put a hanging press in that corner, instead of which you turn
the very passages into office."

"Box C? I remember no box C."

"You may not have noticed the letter C upon it, but the box you must
know as well as I do. It belongs to those proud Yordas people, who hold
their heads so high, forsooth, as if nobody but themselves belonged to a
good old county family! That makes