"Good Lord! Come with us, Harry--the rest stay where you are,"
Mr. Rogers commanded, and ran towards the pavilion; and as we started
I heard a whizzing and cracking within, as of machinery, followed by
a double crack of timber.

"Lydia! Lydia Belcher!"

"Hey! What's the matter now?" I heard Miss Belcher's voice demand, as
he burst in through the doorway. "Take care, the catapult's loaded!"
A whiz, and again a crack. "There now! Oh, well fielded, indeed!
Well fiel--Eh? Caught you on the ankle, did it? Well, and you're
lucky it didn't find your skull, blundering in upon a body in this
fashion."

The first sight that met me as I reached the doorway was Mr. Jack
Rogers holding one foot and hopping around with a face of agony.
From him my astonished gaze travelled to Miss Lydia Belcher, whom I
must pause to describe.

I have hinted before that Miss Belcher was an eccentric; but I
certainly cannot have prepared the reader--as I was certainly
unprepared myself--for Miss Belcher as we surprised her.

She wore top-boots, but this is a trifle, for she habitually wore
top-boots. Upon them, and beneath the short skirt of a red flannel
petticoat, she had indued a pair of cricket-guards. Above the red
flannel petticoat came, frank and unashamed, an ample pair of stays;
above them, the front of a yet ampler chemise and a yellow bandanna
kerchief tied in a sailor's knot; above these, a middle-aged face
full of character and not without a touch of moustache on the upper