s, and provided
the children treated them with due care and respect, had no objection
to their taking them out of the shelves and reading them.

For a long time there was no sound in the room but an occasional
whispered, "_fui, fuisti, fuit_." Presently Grantly and Mary came in
to discuss a fancy-dress dance to which they were bidden that evening
at a neighbour's; then, in rushed Reggie in coat and hat with a newly
arrived parcel in his hand. Ger had seen the railway van come up the
drive, but as he had promised his mother not to move until he had
mastered his verb, he did not make his presence known to anyone.

Reggie went over to Mr Ffolliot's desk, and seeing a shilling lying on
the table seized it and fled from the room. Three minutes later Ger
saw him bowling down the drive in the dog-cart, then Mr Ffolliot
returned, and Ger, feeling tolerably certain of the "perfect and
pluperfect and future perfect," went slowly upstairs to his mother to
repeat it.

All went on peacefully and quietly in the schoolroom for the next half
hour, when suddenly Grantly and Mary whirled into the room in a state
of such excited indignation as took their mother quite five minutes to
discover what all the fuss was about. When at last they had been
induced to tell their story separately, and not in a chorus almost
oratorio-like in its confusion, Mrs Ffolliot discovered to her dismay
that they were accused of meddling with a shilling which their father
had placed on the book-club collecting card, ready for the collector
when she should call.

When she _did_ call the shilling was gone, and as Grantly and Mary were
known to have been in the study, the squire came to the conclusion that
one of them must have knocked against his table and brushed it off, and
he gave it out that "unless they found it, and thus repaired the
mischief and annoyance their carelessness had caused, he would not
allow them to go to the dance that evening!"

He never suspected that any member of his family would take the
shilling, but he was ready to believe all things of their clumsiness.
In vain did Grantly and Mary protest that they had never been near his
desk; the squire might have been Sherlock Holmes himself, so certain
was he as to the exactitude of his deductions.

"The card has been pushed from where it was originally placed to the
extreme edge of the table; the shilling must have been knocked off, and
had doubtless rolled under some article of furni