g himself with great nicety on the sill. He
is in the elegant _neglige_ of a decrepit shooting-jacket, no
waistcoat, and no collar.

"What have you been doing to your face?" says Bobby, drawing nigh, and
peering with artless interest into the details of my appearance; "it is
the color of this" (pointing to a branch of red rhibes, which is hanging
its drooped flowers, and joining its potent spice to the other
flower-scents).

"Is it?" I answer, putting both hands to my cheeks, to feel their
temperature. "I dare say! so would yours be, perhaps, if you had, like
me, been having a--" I stop suddenly.

"Having a _what_?"

"I will not say what I was going to say," I cry, emphatically, "it was
nonsensical!"

"But what _has_ she told you, Nancy?" asks Barbara, who, enervated by
the first hot day, is languishing in the rocking-chair, slowly
see-sawing. "What could it have been that she might not as well have
said before us all?"

"You had better try and guess," I reply, darkly.

"I will not, for one," says Bobby, doggedly, "I never made out a
conundrum in my life, except, 'What is most like a hen stealing?'"

"It is not much like that," say I, demurely, "and, in fact, when one
comes to think of it, it can hardly be called a conundrum at all!"

"I do not believe it is any thing worth hearing," remarks the Brat,
skeptically, "or you would have come out with it long ago! you never
could have kept in to yourself!"

"Not worth hearing!" cry I, triumphantly raising my voice, "is not it?
That is all _you_ know about it!"

"Do not wrangle, children," says Algy from the window; "but, Nancy, if
you have not told us before the clock gets to the quarter" (looking
impressively at the slowly-traveling hands), "I shall think it right
to--"

What awful threats would have followed will never now be certainly
known, for I interrupt.

"I _will_ tell you! I _mean_ to tell you!" I cry, excitedly, covering my
face with my hands, and turning my back to them all; "only do not _look_
at me! look the other way, or I _cannot_ tell you."

A little pause.

"You have only three minutes, Nancy."

"Will you _promise_," cry I, with indistinct emphasis from under my
hands, "none of you to _laugh_--none, even Bobby!"

"Yes!"--"Yes!"--"Yes!"

"Will you _swear_?"

"What is the use of swearing?--you have only half a minute now. Well, I
dare say it is nothing very funny. Yes, we will swear!"

"Well, then, Sir Roger--I _hear_ Bobby laughing