* * * * *


THE PRODIGIES.

We--Great-aunts Emily and Louisa--had in our innocence been telling a
few old fairy stories at bedtime to those three precocities whom our
hosts call their children.

We knew that they talked Latin and Greek in their sleep and were too
much for their parents in argument, but we thought that at least, at
the story hour----

We were stopped by Drusilla. "I don't think much of the moral of that
one," she remarked. "It would seem to illustrate the Evil Consequences
of Benevolence!"

"But she came alive again," said Evadne, the youngest, in extenuation.

"And the wolf was killed," we ventured in defence of our old story.

"Still," persisted Drusilla, "you couldn't call it encouraging."

"Then in the other case," went on Claude thoughtfully, "considering
that she had been left in sole charge of the house and had no business
to go out and leave it to the mercy of burglars, what moral are we to
draw from the fact that she married a Prince and lived happily ever
afterwards?"