ght do something, Peter.'

'Not much!' laughed Peter, a tall, broad-shouldered fellow of fifteen or
so. 'It's good for little girls to do things, and keeps them from growing
out of all their clothes.'

'Chuck it, Babs!' advised the younger of the two. 'What does it matter
whether she thinks we live in a pig-sty or not?'

Barbara looked at them doubtfully, then picked up a pile of ragged music
and staggered across to the cupboard, shot the music into it, and closed
the door just in time to prevent her load from recoiling upon her. A
derisive chuckle from the boys on the table greeted her first attempt at
tidying up; but she went on resolutely.

'Visitors have no business to come and see people at a day's notice
like this,' she complained, as she swept a handful of rusty nails, empty
gum bottles, and other evidences of past occupations into a crowded
waste-paper basket.

Christopher stopped laughing as she said this, and a change crept over
his pale, rather delicate features. 'When the visitor is an _aunt_,' he
said with energy, 'a day's notice is more than enough.'

He associated the aunt in question with certain reforms that had taken
place from time to time in the household; and he had never forgiven her
for inducing their father, just two years ago, to dismiss the nurse they
had all adored and to send Robin and himself to a hated day-school. There
was no knowing what innovations they might not be forced to accept, now
that she was going to descend upon them in person.

Peter chuckled again. Most things to Peter were an occasion for a chuckle.
'That depends on the spirit in which she comes,' he remarked, and he
turned his pockets graphically inside out. 'An aunt who has a big place
in the country, and can afford to travel about in beastly holes like
Munich and the Italian lakes----'

'And can pick up other people's daughters and adopt them,' chimed in
Christopher, 'just because their fathers died fighting in the Soudan
and their mothers died--how did their mothers die, Egbert?'

'Penniless,' grunted Egbert, in response to the kick his book had just
received. 'That's why the kid got adopted, of course.'

'Well,' proceeded Peter, putting his pockets back and nodding wisely, 'if
an aunt like that doesn't behave decently to her deserving nephews----'

'And niece,' added Babs from the back of the sofa, where she had just
deposited a bundle of old schoolbooks.

Peter went on unabashed. 'To her deserving nephews