be
for the children to romp in! Of course, we would require to have it
made of bricks or cast-iron to prevent the rats connecting it with the
sewers, but--"

A breeze of pattering feet overhead induced the doctor to pause. It
increased to a gale on the staircase, to a tempest in the lobby. The
door was burst open, and Jack, and Harry, and Job, and Jenny, and Dolly,
with blazing cheeks and eyes, tumbled tumultuously into the room.

"Oh papa!" screamed Harry, "Lilly's been out an' found her mother!"

"No, it's not--it's her gan-muver," shrieked Dolly.

"Yes, an' Dr Mellon's going to marry her," cried Jenny.

"Who?--the grandmother?" asked the doctor, with a surprised look.

"No--Lilly," they all cried, with a shout of laughter, which Jack
checked by stoutly asserting that it was her great-grandmother that
Lilly had found. This drew an emphatic, "No, it's not," from Job, and a
firmly reiterated assertion that it was "only her gan-muver" from Dolly.

"But Robin said so," cried Jack.

"No, he _didn't_," said Job.

"Yes, he _did_," cried Harry.

"Robin said she's found 'er _gan-muver_," said Dolly.

"I'll go an' ask him," cried Jenny, and turning round, she rushed out of
the room. The others faced about, as one child, and the tempest swept
back into the lobby, moderated to a gale on the staircase, and was
reduced to a breeze--afterwards to a temporary calm--overhead.

Before it burst forth again the doctor and I had put on our hats and
left the house.

From that date forward, for many weeks, the number of lost grandmothers
that were found in the McTougall nursery surpasses belief. They were
discovered in all sorts of places, and in all imaginable circumstances--
under beds, tables, upturned baths, and basin-stands; in closets,
trunks, and cupboards, and always in a condition of woeful weakness and
melancholy destitution. The part of grandmother was invariably assigned
to Dolly, because, although the youngest of the group, that little
creature possessed a power of acting and of self-control which none of
the others could equal. At first they were careful to keep as close to
the original event as possible; but after a time, thirsting for variety,
they became lax, and the grandmothers were found not only by
granddaughters, but by daughters, and cousins, and nieces, and nephews;
but the play never varied in the points of extreme poverty and woe,
because Dolly refused, with invincible determination, to chan