but I never thought so before but now I
do; because I hollered right out when they
stung me which I am ashamed of. You said
confession was good for the sole, and so I
think: so now I will say good-by from

"'BASIL.'"

"What a dear boy!" cried Gertrude.

"Oh, he is!" said Margaret, the happy tears springing to her eyes. "He
is one of the very dearest boys that ever lived, Gertrude; so manly and
honest, and so funny, too. Gerald knows him!" she added, shyly. "I wish
he had been at home when you were there, Peggy."

"Yes; he must be a brick!" said Peggy. "Now, Margaret, you know he is,
and you know that nothing but 'brick' expresses what I mean. Girls, I
appeal to you. Margaret wants me to talk like a professor all the time,
and I am not a professor, and am never likely to be one. Bell, isn't
'brick' all right?"

Bell looked conscious. "I confess I say it, Peggy; I confess it seems
much heartier than the same thing in what my mother calls good English.
Still--I believe it would sound very queer to me if she used it; the
mother, I mean."

"Grace used to say 'a quadrangular piece of baked clay!'" said Gertrude.
"Don't you remember, Peggy?"

"So she did--dear thing! Well, but, Bell, would you have girls talk just
the way grown-up people do? It would sound awfully stiff and poky. I
don't mean that it sounds so when your mother talks!" she cried; "of
course you know I don't mean that. But girls _aren't_ grown-up, you
know."

"But they are going to be!" said Margaret. "If they don't learn good
English now, how are they going to do it later? It does seem to me a
terrible pity, with all our great, glorious language, to use so little
of it, and to use it so often wrong. You may think me priggish and
professorial, and anything else you like, Peggy dear, but that is what I
think."

"I love you to distraction," said Peggy; "you are an angel, but I think
you carry it too far. What would you say instead of 'brick?' how would
you describe this boy--who simply _is_ a brick?"

Margaret reflected. "I should say he was a nice, manly boy!" she said,
presently.

"Nice! now, Margaret! 'nice' is niminy, you know it is, and piminy too."

"The great advantage of 'brick,'" said Bell, "is that it is one word,
and 'nice manly boy' is three, and doesn't mean the same thing then."

"There!" cried Peggy, in triumph. "What do you say to that, Margaret?
Find one wo