gg?" to Joyce, with a forced
smile that makes her charming face quite sad.

"Have you two been married eight whole years?" asks Joyce laying her
elbows on the table, and staring at her sister with an astonished gaze.
"It seems like yesterday! What a swindler old Time is. To look at
Barbara, one would not believe she could have been _born_ eight years
ago."

"Nonsense!" says Mrs. Monkton laughing, and looking as pleased as
married women--even the happiest--always do, when they are told they
look _un_married. "Why Tommy is seven years old."

"Oh! That's nothing!" says Joyce airily, turning her dark eyes, that are
lovelier, if possible, than her sister's, upon the sturdy child who is
sitting at his father's right hand. "Tommy, we all know, is much older
than his mother. Much more advanced; more learned in the wisdom of
_this_ world; aren't you, Tommy?"

But Tommy, at this present moment, is deaf to the charms of
conversation, his young mind being nobly bent on proving to his sister
(a priceless treasure of six) that the salt-cellar planted between them
belongs _not_ to her, but to him! This sounds reasonable, but the
difficulty lies in making Mabel believe it. There comes the pause
eloquent at last, and then, I regret to say, the free fight!

It might perhaps have been even freer, but for the swift intervention of
the paternal relative, who, swooping down upon the two belligerents with
a promptitude worthy of all praise, seizes upon his daughter, and in
spite of her kicks, which are noble, removes her to the seat on his left
hand.

Thus separated hope springs within the breasts of the lookers-on that
peace may soon be restored; and indeed, after a sob or two from Mabel,
and a few passes of the most reprehensible sort from Tommy (entirely of
the facial order), a great calm falls upon the breakfast-room.

"When I was your age, Tommy," says Mr. Monkton addressing his son, and
striving to be all that the orthodox parent ought to be, "I should have
been soundly whipped if I had behaved to my sister as you have just now
behaved to yours!"

"You _haven't_ a sister," says Tommy, after which the argument falls
flat. It is true, Mr. Monkton is innocent of a sister, but how did the
little demon remember that so _apropos_.

"Nevertheless," said Mr. Monkton, "if I _had_ had a sister, I _know_ I
should not have been unkind to her."

"Then she'd have been unkind to you," says Tommy, who is evidently not
afraid to enter upon