ild is doomed
to behold your head carried past the windows on a pike? Was there
meaning in the artless prattle of our Thomas just now when he condemned
windows as a social nuisance, or----"

"I suppose you think you are amusing!" interrupts the spinster,
malignantly. It is plain that she objects to the idea of her head being
on a pike. "At all events, if you must jest on serious subjects, I
desire you, Richard, to leave me out of your silly maunderings."

"Your will is my law," says Dicky, rising. "I leave you!"

He makes a tragic, retreat, and finding an empty chair near Monkton
takes possession of it.

"I must protest against your opinion," says Dysart, addressing Miss
L'Estrange with a smile. "Children should be regarded as something
better than mere lumps of clay to be experimentalized upon!"

"Oh, yes," says Barbara, regarding the spinster gently but with
ill-concealed aversion. "You cannot expect any one to agree with you
there. I, for one, could not."

"I don't know that I ever asked you to," says Miss L'Estrange with such
open impertinence that Barbara flushes up to the roots of her hair.

Silence falls on the room, except for a light conversation being carried
on between Dicky and Monkton, both of whom have heard nothing. Lady
Monkton looks uncomfortable. Sir George hastens to the rescue.

"Surely you haven't told us everything, Tommy?" says he giving his
grandson a pull toward him. "Besides Mr. Bluebeard, what else was
there?"

"Lots of things," says Tommy, vaguely, coming back from an eager
attention to Miss L'Estrange's evil suggestion to a fresh remembrance of
his past delights. "There was a band and it shouted. Nurse said it took
the roof off her head, but I looked, and her bonnet didn't stir. And
there was the harlequin, he was beautiful. He shined like anything. He
was all over scales, like a trout."

"A queer fish," says his grandfather.

"He jumped about and beat things with a little stick he had. And he
danced, and there was a window and he sprang right through it, and he
came up again and wasn't a bit hurt, not a bit. Oh! he was lovely,
grandpapa, and so was his concubine----"

"His what?" says Sir George.

"His concubine. His sweetheart. That was her name," says Tommy
confidently.

There is a ghastly silence. Lady Monkton's pale old cheeks color
faintly. Miss L'Estrange glares. As for Barbara, she feels the world has
at last come to an end. They will be angry with the boy. Her miss