Since last Sunday Dick and Muriel have talked of nothing else but your hippopotamus.

We will picnic in the woods--there will only be eleven of us,--and in the evenings we will have music and recitations.

Muriel is master of six pieces already, as perhaps you know; and all the other children are quick studies." George climbed down--he has no real courage--but he did not do it gracefully.

He said that if we were mean and cowardly and false-hearted enough to stoop to such a shabby trick, he supposed he couldn't help it; and that if I didn't intend to finish the whole bottle of claret myself, he would trouble me to spare him a glass.

He also added, somewhat illogically, that it really did not matter, seeing both Ethelbertha and Mrs.Harris were women of sense who would judge him better than to believe for a moment that the suggestion emanated from him.
This little point settled, the question was: What sort of a change?
Harris, as usual, was for the sea.