hat _is_ the matter?" queried Bridgie once more, and this time there
was a touch of testiness in her voice, for it was trying to have her
efforts treated with such want of appreciation, and even if the dish
were not all that could be desired, consideration for her feelings might
have kept her brothers silent before a stranger. "Miles, _you_ taste
it!" she cried, and Miles smacked his lips for a thoughtful moment, and
pronounced sturdily--

"It's very good!"

Sylvia groaned involuntarily; she could not help it, and Jack gasped
with incredulous dismay, staring at his brother as if he could not
believe his senses.

"Well, I always did say that there was nothing in this wide world which
would quell your appetite, but this beats everything! Take another
spoonful--I _dare_ you to do it!"

"All right, here goes! It's a very good mixture," said Miles
complacently, swallowing spoonful after spoonful, while his _vis-a-vis_
looked on with distended eyes, and Pat stood transfixed upon the
threshold. As for Bridgie, her face brightened with relief, and she
smiled upon her younger brother with grateful affection.

"That's right, Miles; never mind what they say! You are the greatest
comfort I have. Some people are so saucy there is no pleasing them.
You and I will enjoy it, if no one else will."

So far she had prudently refrained from experimenting on her own
account, but now she took up her spoon, and there was a breathless
silence in the room while she lifted it to her lips. It fell back on
the plate with a rattle and clang, and an agonised glance roamed round
the table from one face to another.

"Oh--oh--oh! How p-p-p-perfectly awful! What can have happened? It
was so nice when I left it! Has anyone"--the voice took a tone of
indignation--"have any of you boys been playing tricks on me?"

"How could we, now, if you think of it? We have been upstairs or in the
drawing-room ever since we came back. It's not the will that's wanting,
but the opportunity!" cried the boys in chorus; but it was not a time
for joking, and Bridgie smote upon the table-gong with a determined
hand.

"Then it must be Sarah's fault. She has done something to it. It is
too bad--I took such pains!" She looked pathetically at the red marks
which still lingered on her fingers from that painful cutting and
scraping, and there was a distinct air of resentment in the voice in
which she questioned her assistant a moment later.

Sarah was a