, Drusie. We
shan't think anything of you as a chairman if you leave a drop."

"I keep on drinking all the time," said poor Drusie, giving her
tumbler, still nearly full, a glance of strong distaste.

"Perhaps you only sip it," said Jim gravely. "Shut your eyes, and take
big mouthfuls. You _must_ finish it, you know."

The sense of duty was strong in Drusie, and so she shut her eyes and
made one more heroic effort. The instant her eyes were closed, Jim
filled up her glass as she drank. He had hoped to make her finish the
entire jugful, but he shook so with suppressed laughter that instead of
pouring it into her glass he poured it on to her nose.

"O Jim!" she said reproachfully, as the truth burst upon her; "how much
have I drunk?"

"Four tumblers full," he said triumphantly. "You make a splendid
chairman, Drusie."

She couldn't help laughing, too, when she saw the nearly empty jug.
She dried her face, scolded Jim, and then forgave him in the same
breath, for a sweeter-tempered child than Drusie never lived. After
that the meeting broke up, and a few minutes later the bell rang for
breakfast.

Hal was already seated at the table when they reached the nursery. He
was a nice-looking boy, taller than Drusie by a couple of inches, and
well grown for his years, which would be twelve on the following
Tuesday.

"Hallo!" he said, as they all trooped in; "what have you been up to? I
know," he said, catching sight of the tumbler now really empty at last
in Drusie's hand. "A secret meeting. You might have asked me. What
was it about?"

[Illustration: Hal at table]

Drusie flushed up and looked guilty. She could not tell him that the
meeting had been about himself. But just then Helen interposed.

"Why, you wouldn't have cared to come," she said. "You said yesterday
that secret meetings were baby things."

So he had, but it nevertheless was a pity that Helen reminded him of it
just then. He had come down to breakfast that morning inclined to drop
back into his old place among them, and his tone and manner were
friendly and pleasant. But Helen's speech rubbed him up the wrong way
at once, and in an instant he became the lofty and contemptuous
school-boy brother again.

"And so they are baby things, Miss Helen," he said; "but it is rather
amusing, you know, to watch babies at play. That is why I should have
liked to be told of this important secret meeting in time."

That that was not the reason D