in favour of the boys' room and the
little eerie inhabited by Lavender, each of which occupied equally good
sites.

"Stick to it! Stick to it!" were Harry's instructions to his younger
brother. "They can't put the thing up without us, so they're bound to
come round in the end, and if we've got the telegraph station, it will
give us the whip hand over them for ever. It's our room, and they've
jolly well got to behave if they want to come in. If they turn rusty,
we'll lock the door, and they'll have to be civil, or do without the
telegraph. Let 'em talk till they're tired, and then they'll give in,
and we'll go out and buy the cord."

And in the end the girls succumbed as predicted. Lavender's pride in
owning the site of the great enterprise weakened before the tragic
picture drawn for her warning, in which she saw herself roused from
slumber at unearthly hours of the night, leaning out of an opened window
to draw a frozen cord through bleeding hands. She decided that on the
whole it would be more agreeable to lie snugly in bed and receive the
messages from the boys over a warm and leisurely breakfast.

These two great points arranged, nothing now remained but the erection
of the line itself, and two strong iron hoops having been fixed into the
outer sills of the respective windows a fine Saturday afternoon
witnessed the first struggle with the cord.

Vie Vernon and plain Hannah unrolled one heavy skein, threaded it
through their own hoop, and lowered the two ends into the garden, where
John stood at attention ready to throw them over the wall. Darsie and
Lavender dropped their ends straight into the street, and then chased
madly downstairs to join the boys and witness the junction of the lines.
Each line being long enough in itself to accomplish the double journey,
the plan was to pull the connected string into the Garnett station, cut
off the superfluous length, and tie the ends taut and firm. Nothing
could have seemed easier in theory, but in practice unexpected
difficulties presented themselves. The side street was as a rule
singularly free from traffic, but with the usual perversity of fate,
every tradesman's cart in the neighbourhood seemed bent on exercising
its horse up and down its length this Saturday afternoon. No sooner
were lines knotted together in the middle of the road than the
greengrocer came prancing round the corner, and they must needs be
hastily untied; secured a second time, the milkm