T was the opinion of Robin Dalrymple that Mangnall was a humbug. Such, at least, was the fact that he announced, in tones both loud and decided, as he closed a somewhat battered copy of that author's works with a tremendous clap, and tossed it contemptuously on the table. Lessons were

over in the schoolroom at Horsemandown; and Miss Gregory, at the writing-table in her own peculiar corner, was doing her best to be deaf for a few moments to her pupils' clamour, while she tried to finish a letter in time for the post. Now the Horsemandown schoolroom was hardly the place one would choose for the purpose of writing a letter at any time-much less at four o'clock in the afternoon, when the operation of 'clearing away' was taking place. Fortunately, however, Miss Gregory was used to it; and her pen continued to scratch away

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valiantly, in spite of the opening and shutting of drawers, the tumbling of books or slates on the floor, the heavy bang of the piano lid, and the uproar of shrill voices that almost drowned the rest of the clatter around her. 'Yes,' repeated Robin, taking up a perilous position on the table between two inkstands: Mangnall is a humbug! Silvia, don't you agree with me?'

But Silvia was busily engaged with a sponge and a gallipot of water, generally known in the family as the schoolroom jam-pot;' and as she never could answer when appealed to suddenly, she was obliged to pause in her occupation of washing the slates, and lean both elbows on the table in order to meditate. Whereupon Sydney burst in: 'Humbug, of course! All lessons are humbug, except perhaps geography. That's the only one that has something like sense in it.'

'Sense in

Robin raised his eyebrows incredulously. geography! Why, Syd, if there is a thing that's utterly abominable and senseless, that's it. To have to remember what's the capital of what, and where rivers "take their source," and to find out the latitude and longitude of wretched places where one never goes, and never wants to go!'

'But that is the very thing,' said Sydney. 'I do want to go there; and, what is more, I mean to go some day when I'm a sailor, and sail round the world. I want to go to China and India and South America-Egypt, of course (not Europe. I don't care for stupid, civilised places).'

'Oh Syd!' interrupted Silvia's deliberate little voice.

'Not care to see Edinburgh or Rome! Think of Horatius. Don't you care to see places where things happened long ago, or where celebrated people used to live? I did so like going over the Tower last year, and seeing where the poor little princes were murdered, and where Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned, and putting my hand on the very same stone that perhaps his had been on.'

'But why?' asked Sydney. 'It makes no difference. The stone looks just the same, whether he touched it or not.'

Silvia could not tell why. She could only knit her brows, and repeat in a meditative tone her favourite phrase, 'Somehow I don't know,' till Sydney grew tired of waiting for an answer, and began again.

'Well, all that I can say is, that I don't care a farthing for the Tower of London, or Horatius, or Sir Walter Raleigh, or any of those people. I never can remember which is which, or what they did. I want to travel, and discover new countries, and fight wild beasts and savages, and see all sorts of extraordinary plants and animals, and forests full of poisonous snakes and fire-flies, and tremendously big ferns, and humming-birds, and get into all sorts of dangers, and go where no one has ever been before. Oh, that would be glorious!'

'Somehow,' began Silvia, rousing herself from a reverie, and going on rather languidly with her slate-cleaning duties- I don't know-(well, you needn't laugh whenever I open my mouth, Sydney). I mean to say, I should like to have the "goloshes of fortune."'

'What! Like the people in Robin's fairy-book?' said little Dolly.

'Yes: who always got whatever they wished for, directly they put the goloshes on. I should like to jump back into the Middle Ages, like the old Professor.'

'But you know, Silvia,' Robin remarked, with a very sagacious look in his round brown eyes: 'you know how much the Professor hated the Middle Ages when he got into them.'

'That,' rejoined Silvia, 'was because he managed so badly. He didn't know he was in the Middle Ages at all. I should know where I was, and not be surprised at everything looking different and odd. I should keep wishing myself first in one century and then in another, I think

'Yes. And only imagine,' said Sydney, 'how Queen Elizabeth would open her eyes when you told her about railways, and the penny post, and balloons, and photographs, and velocipedes !'

'Oh Syd, I wish you wouldn't! As if I should tell her anything about those stupid things! Of course I shouldn't talk about what wasn't invented-then-a-days,' finished Silvia, after pausing in vain for a suitable expression.

'Well, do you know,' announced Robin, putting his hands in his pockets, and nodding his head emphatically; "I think the "goloshes of fortune" would be awfully wasted on you two. Such stupid things to wish! know what would be much jollier than journeying back

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into the Middle Ages among all those ridiculous people in Mangnall; or going to places where one never can find their latitude and longitude.'

'My dear Robin,' cried Christie, 'your grammar is getting perfectly wild.'

'Pooh! Bother grammar. Because Christie happens to be twelve, she is always setting-up to be as clever as Miss Gregory. As if one could worry one's self about grammar out of school hours. Now, Silvia, I'll tell you where I'd go if I had those goloshes: I'd go right into fairy-land, and see all the people in the Arabian Nights and the Midsummer Night's Dream, and Hans Andersen's stories. They would be much better worth seeing than your Sir Walter Raleighs and Horatiuses and Syd's savages. I shouldn't care to see real people: they would put me so in mind of Mangnall.'

'But

'I don't much like Mangnall,' Silvia confessed. I tell you what it would be rather nice to be put into it one's self when one is grown up. I mean to write books some day; and then, perhaps, I might be put into the British Biographies !'

'Oh Silvia, and have a portrait like this!' cried Robin, opening the ill-used book at a page where Miss Mitford was depicted in company with other worthies, whose heads had been adorned by Sydney with cocked hats, and whose eyes had been altered by Robin to a size and blackness appalling to behold.

'Come, boys,' said Christie, after there had been a general laugh at Silvia's ambition, 'make haste and finish