lectors.

"I am going by the 4.15 to the town," said he, as he pulled the box
out towards his own room. "You need not wait for either Clinton or me.
Pray 'ring up' punctually!"

At this moment--having fully realized the downfall of the
theatricals--Bobby burst into a howl of weeping. Alice scolded him for
crying, and Charles reproached her for scolding him, on the score that
her antipathy to Mr. Clinton had driven Philip to this extreme point
of insult and ill-temper.

Charles's own conduct had been so far from soothing, that Alice had
abundant material for retorts, and she was not likely to be a loser in
the war of words. What she did say I did not hear, for by that time I
had locked myself up in my own room.

CHAPTER IX.

SELF-REPROACH--FAMILY DISCOMFORT--OUT ON THE MARSH--VICTORY.

If I could have locked myself up anywhere else I should have preferred
it. I would have justified my own part in the present family quarrel
to Aunt Isobel herself, and yet I would rather not have been alone
just now with the text I had made and pinned up, and with my new
picture. However, there was nowhere else to go to.

A restless way I have of pacing up and down when I am in a rage, has
often reminded me of the habits of the more ferocious of the wild
beasts in the Zoological Gardens, and has not lessened my convictions
on the subject of the family temper. For a few prowls up and down my
den I managed to occupy my thoughts with fuming against Philip's
behaviour, but as the first flush of anger began to cool, there was no
keeping out of my head the painful reflections which the sight of my
text, my picture, and my books suggested--the miserable contrast
between my good resolves and the result.

"It only shows," I muttered to myself, in a voice about as amiable as
the growlings of a panther, "it only shows that it is quite hopeless.
We're an ill-tempered family--a hopelessly ill-tempered family; and to
try to cure us is like patching the lungs of a consumptive family, I
don't even wish that I _could_ forgive Philip. He doesn't deserve it."

And then as I nursed the cut on my elbow, and recalled the long hours
of work at the properties, the damaged scene, the rifling of the
green-room, and Philip's desertion with the Dragon, his probable
industry for Mr. Clinton's theatricals, and the way he had left us to
face our own disappointed audience, fierce indignation got the upper
hand once more.

"I don't care," I growled af