After all, they had no business to bring the great, troublesome,
heavy-weighted world into a child's party. I wish man never would;
though it did not happen badly, as it all turned out, that they did
a little of it in this instance. If they had thought of it,
"Crambo" was good for them too, for a change; and presently they did
think of it; for Dorris called out in distress, real or pretended,
from the table,--

"Kentie, here's something you must really take off my hands! I
haven't the least idea what to do with it."

And then came a cry from Hazel,--

"No fair! We're all just as badly off, and there isn't one of us
that has got a brother to turn to. Here's another for Mr. Kincaid."

"There are plenty more. Come, Mr. Oldways, Mr. Geoffrey, won't you
try 'Crambo?' There's a good deal in it, as there is in most
nonsense."

"We'll come and see what it is," said Mr. Geoffrey; and so the
chairs were drawn up, and the gray, grave heads looked on over the
young ones.

"Why, Hazel's got through!" said Lois, scratching violently at her
paper, and obliterating three obstinate lines.

"O, I didn't bother, you see! I just stuck the word right in, like a
pin into a pincushion, and let it go. There wasn't anything else to