don't they shut up their jaw? This old rabbit here--_he_
doesn't want to talk. He's got something better to do.' And Edward aimed
a ginger-beer cork at the unruffled beast, who never budged.

'O but rabbits _do_ talk,' interposed Harold. 'I've watched them often
in their hutch. They put their heads together and their noses go up and
down, just like Selina's and the Vicarage girls'. Only of course I can't
hear what they're saying.'

'Well, if they do,' said Edward unwillingly, 'I'll bet they don't talk
such rot as those girls do!' Which was ungenerous, as well as unfair;
for it had not yet transpired--nor has it to this day--_what_ Selina and
her friends talked about.

[Illustration]

THE ARGONAUTS

THE advent of strangers, of whatever sort, into our circle had always
been a matter of grave dubiety and suspicion. Indeed, it was generally a
signal for retreat into caves and fastnesses of the earth, into
unthreaded copses or remote outlying cowsheds, whence we were only to be
extricated by wily nursemaids, rendered familiar by experience with our
secret runs and refuges. It was not surprising, therefore, that the
heroes of classic legend, when first we made their acquaintance, failed
to win our entire sympathy at once. 'Confidence,' says somebody, 'is a
plant of slow growth'; and these stately dark-haired demi-gods, with
names hard to master and strange accoutrements, had to win a citadel
already strongly garrisoned with a more familiar soldiery. Their chill
foreign goddesses had no such direct appeal for us as the mocking
malicious fairies and witches of the North. We missed the pleasant
alliance of the animal--the fox who spread the bushiest of tails to
convey us to the enchanted castle, the frog in the well, the raven who
croaked advice from the tree; and--to Harold especially--it seemed
entirely wrong that the hero should ever be other than the youngest
brother of three. This belief, indeed, in the special fortune that ever
awaited the youngest brother, as such,--the 'Borough-English' of
Faery,--had been of baleful effect on Harold, producing a certain
self-conceit and perkiness that called for physical correction. But even
in our admonishment we were on his side; and as we distrustfully eyed
these new arrivals, old Saturn himself seemed something of a _parvenu_.

Even strangers, however, if they be good fellows at heart, may develop
into sworn comrades; and these gay swordsmen, after all, were of the
ri