make the replies. She thought they would get on better
if we were out of the way.

So we went to the convention, as she called it, which
was really not properly a convention, but the Forty-fifth
Biennial General Synod, and we left the girls to their
own sweet way.

Shall I confess that they kept no record of their own
signals, and did not remember very accurately what they
were? "I was not going to keep a string of `says I's'
and `says she's,'" said Polly, boldly. "it shall not be
written on my tomb that I have left more annals for
people to file or study or bind or dust or catalogue."
But they told us that they had begun by asking the
"bricks" if they remembered what Maria Theresa said to
her ladies-in-waiting.[1] Quicker than any signal had
ever been answered, George Orcutt's party replied from
the Moon, "We hear, and we obey." Then the women-kind
had it all to themselves. The brick-women explained at
once to our girls that they had sent their men round to
the other side to cut ice, and that they were manning the
telescope, and running the signals for themselves, and
that they could have a nice talk without any bother about
the law-books or the magnetic pole. As I say, I do
not know what questions Polly and Annie put; but--to give
them their due--they had put on paper a coherent record
of the results arrived at in the answers; though, what
were the numbers of the despatches, or in what order they
came, I do not know; for the session of the synod kept us