igned. The mysterious message
was at last announced, amid laughter and shouts from the youngest.

"Aunt Lucy says that Cornelia told her that Charlie reported that John
had eaten ten slices of mince-pie to-day. He is very sick, and I'll send
him home to his mother."

"But I only said, 'Cornelia and Charlie both told me John hadn't eaten
one slice of mince-pie to-day. I'm afraid he is sick, and it is well he
is going home to his mother!'

"Rather a difference! But who altered it? It seems to me Cornelia looks
mischievous!"

"O, that's a way I have! Poor little me, all the mischief is put on my
shoulders! But--honest now--Tom whispered so low, that I thought it
might as well be ten slices as one!"

"And now change places," said Alice, "and put Cornelia head as a reward
of merit--we'll fix her; and then we can try 'Whispering Gallery'
again."

No sooner said than done, and Cornelia started the game by saying to her
nearest neighbor, "How sorry I am to leave The Grange! I never was so
happy in all my life; and Charlie says so too!"

But the outcome of this very innocent remark was as follows: "How sorry
I am I came to The Grange! I never will be happy again in all my life,
and Charlie says so, too!"

"Are you sure there was no cheating?" asked Mr. Wyndham.

"No, dear uncle, impossible," replied Cornelia. "I couldn't, and they
wouldn't; they are all quite too good for that; every one of them,
except, perhaps, Charlie, who is in a peculiar sense my own first
cousin. But it seems to be a property of a whisper to be a _twister_; it
is sure to get in a tangle, and comes out quite different from the way
you started it."

"Just so," answered up Charlie. "It is like what they say happens in
Cincinnati. You put in a grunter at one end of the machine, and in a few
minutes it comes out in the form of bacon, hams, lard, sausages, and
hair-brushes!"

"My dear Charlie," chimed in his uncle, "that is the loudest 'whisper'
I've heard yet! But, seriously, boys and girls, don't you see in the
game how evil reports originate, and how easy it is, by the slightest
variation from the straight line, to falsify the truth?"

"That's so," said Mary. "And I have often noticed how whispers glide
into gossip, and gossip into scandal, before people are aware. I've
resolved many a time not to talk about _people_, but things, and then
I'll escape doing harm with my unruly member."

"I, too," said Charlie, demurely, "have frequently writte