, picking up a tempting
egg-shaped pebble, nearly as big as her fist, and throwing it with
remarkably neat action (for a girl) at the first pear-tree over the
bridge that spanned the trout-stream.

_At_, but not into.

With that extraordinary magnetic attraction which glass has for the
missile of the juvenile thrower, the orchid-house, on the opposite
side of the path from the pear-tree, drew the errant stone to its
hospitable shelter.

Through the biggest pane of glass it crashed, neatly decapitated a
rare, choice exotic, the pride of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith,
head gardener, released from its hold a hanging basket, struck a large
pot (perched high in a state of unstable equilibrium), and passed out
on the other side with something accomplished, something done, to earn
a long repose.

So much for the stone.

The descending pot lit upon the edge of one side of the big glass
aquarium, smashed it, and continued its career, precipitating an
avalanche of lesser pots and their priceless contents.

The hanging basket, now an unhung and travelling basket, heavy,
iron-ribbed, anciently mossy, oozy of slime, fell with neat exactitude
upon the bald, bare cranium of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith, head
gardener, and dour, irascible child and woman hater.

"Bull's-eye!" commented Dam--always terse when not composing
fairy-tales.

"Crikey!" shrieked Lucille. "That's done it," and fled straightway to
her room and violent earnest prayer, not for forgiveness but for
salvation, from consequences. (What's the good of Saying your Prayers
if you can't look for Help in Time of Trouble such as this?)

The face of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith was not pleasant to see
as he pranced forth from the orchid-house, brandishing an implement of
his trade.

"Ye'll be needing a wash the day, Mon Sandy, and the Sawbath but fower
days syne," opined Dam, critically observing the moss-and-mud streaked
head, face and neck of the raving, incoherent victim of Lucille's
effort.

When at all lucid and comprehensible Mr. MacIlwraith was understood to
say he'd give his place (and he twanty-twa years in it) to have the
personal trouncing of Dam, that Limb, that Deevil, that predestined
and fore-doomed Child of Sin, that--

Dam pocketed his hands and said but:--

"_Havers_, Mon Sandy!"

"I'll tak' the hide fra y'r bones yet, ye feckless, impident--"

Dam shook a disapproving head and said but:--

"_Clavers_, Mon Sandy!"

"I'll _