uare inch of an exquisitely knitted Shetland shawl, fine as a cobweb,
which Ted had begged from Mabel when she was giving the remains of the
shawl to Cissy for her doll. There were bits of different kinds of coal;
there was "Blue John" from a Derbyshire cavern, and a tiny china doll
which, much charred and disfigured, had yet survived the great fire of
Chicago, where one of the children's uncles had passed by not long
after; there was a bit of black bread from the siege of Paris; there
were all manner of things, all ticketed and numbered, and their
description neatly entered in a catalogue which lay on a little table
by the door, on which was also to be seen another book, in which Ted
requested all visitors to the museum to write their names, and all the
big people of the family so well understood the boy's pride and pleasure
in his museum, that no one ever thought of making his way into his
little room without his invitation.

Ted had begun his museum some months before the great excitement of the
nest in the tree, but the delights of the long summer days out of doors
had a little put it out of his head. But the latter part, as well as the
beginning of these holidays, happened to be very rainy, and the last
fortnight was spent mostly by Percy and Ted in the tiny museum room,
where Percy helped Ted to finish the ticketing and numbering that he had
not long before begun. And Cissy, of course, was as busy as anybody,
flopping about with an old pocket-handkerchief which she called her
duster, and reproving the boys with great dignity for unsettling any of
the trays she had made so "bootily clean."

"You must try to get some more feathers, Ted," said Percy. "They make
such a pretty collection. There's a fellow at our school that has an
awful lot. He fastens them on to cards--he's got a bird-of-Paradise
plume, an awful beauty. Indeed he's got two, for he offered to sell me
one for half-a-crown. Wouldn't you like it?"

"I should think I would," said Ted, "but I can't buy anything this half.
You know my money's owing to mother for that that I told you about."

He gave a little sigh; the bird of Paradise was a tempting idea.

"_Poor_ Ted," said Cissy, clambering down from her stool to give him a
hug.

Ted accepted the hug, but not the pity.

"No, Cissy. I'm not poor Ted for that," he said merrily. "It was ever
so kind of mother to put it all right, and ever so much kinder of
her to do it that way. I shouldn't have liked