each gazed at it solemnly.
"I can't tell whether it is meant for a ship, or an iceberg, or a tent.
Perhaps it is all three, and means that you are going to travel,
Bettikins."

"Oh yes," said Betty, "I shouldn't be surprised. I mean to travel when
I am grown up, and I always feel that I shall do something some day."

"I feel I shall do something to-night if I don't get something to eat
soon," interrupted Dan, in a tone intended to touch Fanny's heart.
"It is half-past eight, and tea has been over for more than two hours."

"Well," said Jabez, as the tumblers and the mysterious lead figures were
whisked away, "'tis just as well nobody couldn't attempt to tell what
mine was, for I wouldn't 'ave 'urt anybody's ingenooity with trying to.
If 'twasn't a blacksmith's shop, 'twas a vegetable stall; and if
'twasn't that, 'twasn't nothing; and things when they'm like that is
best left alone, it's my belief."

"P'r'aps it was the table with supper laid on it," suggested Kitty.

"P'r'aps 'twas, Miss Kitty; but I'm sorry for us all if 'twas, for the
dishes, if dishes they was, was empty, and that wouldn't suit us at the
present minute."

But it exactly depicted the state of the dishes half an hour later, for,
as Fanny said when they wanted the kitchen cleared for games, "there
wasn't nothing to clear but empty things."

By that time all stiffness had worn away, every one was in the highest
spirits, and the games went on furiously, so furiously that the striking
of the hall clock and the town clock were overlooked, and the first
thing that recalled them to themselves was a loud ringing of the
front-door bell.

For one second they stood looking at each other in utter dismay, then--"
The back stairs," whispered Dan. "Fly, children, scoot, and hop into
bed as you are.--Jabez--"

But Jabez had already vanished through the back door and had shut
himself in Prue's stable. Up the back stairs the children scuttled,
shoes in hand, and melted away into their various rooms without a sound.
Kitty stayed a moment with Tony to help him into bed, and as she crept
out of his room the sound of voices in the hall reached her.

"Grace needn't have hurried so to let them in," she thought. "She could
at least have pretended she was asleep and didn't hear the knock, and so
have given us a few minutes more." But Grace's promptness was such that
Kitty had barely time to draw her nightgown on over her frock and creep
into her bed before she