The boys have been out fishing.

Algy and Bobby have been humorously trying to drown the Brat.

He looks small and cold in consequence, and his little pert nose is
tinged with a chilly pink. Half an hour ago, mother called me away to a
private conference, exciting thereby a mighty curiosity not unmixed with
envy in my brethren.

Our colloquy is ended now, and I am reëntering the school-room.

"Well, what was it? out with it," cries Algy, almost before I am inside
the door again. Algy is sitting more than half--more than three-quarters
out of the window, balancing himself with great nicety on the sill. He
is in the elegant _négligé_ of a decrepit shooting-jacket, no waistcoat,
and no collar.

"What have you been doing to your face?" says Bobby, drawing nigh, and
peering with artless interest into the details of my appearance; "it is
the color of this" (pointing to a branch of red rhibes, which is hanging
its drooped flowers, and joining its potent spice to the other
flower-scents).

"Is it?" I answer, putting both hands to my cheeks, to feel their
temperature. "I dare say! so would yours be, perhaps, if you had, like
me, been having a--" I stop suddenly.

"Having a _what_?"

"I will not say what I was going to say," I cry, emphatically, "it was