use themselves as best they can during the long hours of
a Saturday morning. Here are Ned and I, who only get a peep of home once
a week, and even on that occasion we seldom get half a peep of you.
Confess now, isn't it too bad?"

"Bad!" put in Ned, before she could speak, "It's villainous. Here am I,
shut up in a dingy office all week and every day of the week, with
nothing more amusing than that highly respectable old humbug,
Blackstone, to lighten the weary moments, and when I come home it isn't
a bit better."

"Oh, you two poor, neglected beings!" Cried Minnie, laughing heartlessly
at their rueful faces, "What would you like me to do for your amusement?
Read goody stories to you, or play at wild beasts?--Which?"

"Why, you're just as heartless as any other girl could possibly be,"
asserted Ned.

"And haven't I quite as good a right?" enquired Minnie saucily. "Pray,
tell me why shouldn't I be?"

"Oh, as to that, you may be just as heartless as you please to other
fellows--the more so the better, _I_ should say--but you might have a
little consideration for the feeling of your brothers," replied Ned,
calling up a look of tragic gloom, delightful to behold.

"I say," interrupted Archie at this juncture, "I'm ferociously hungry.
Do let's see about having something to eat. In my opinion, the best way
to amuse one's self under the present circumstances, and to lay the
foundation of an imperturbable temper, is to satisfy the cravings of the
inner man."

"Well spoken!" approved Charlie, patting him on the head, "you're a
sound philosopher, my boy, and deserve every honour."

"''Tis not for praise, my voice I raise,'" sang Charlie, "I speak only
in the interests of common sense, and common necessity," he continued in
a sepulchral voice, "and I rather think Pope had the same interests at
heart when he represented justice weighing solid pudding against empty
praise."

They all laughed at the extreme literalness of Archie's interpretation,
which Charlie declared would probably have afforded the great poet
himself unbounded satisfaction. By this time they had made the
transition from the parlour to the dining-room, where, on the table just
by Minnie's plate lay a letter, directed in a peculiar yet beautiful
form of writing. Ned, in passing, was arrested by it, and lifted it the
better to observe its beauty.

"Look here!" he exclaimed, "what peculiar writing--I never saw anything
like this before. Did you, Charlie?"