regarded me sideways with half-shut eyes.

"It's a dead secret," I said artfully. "A secret between us two,
and nobody knows it except ourselves!"

Then she promised, nodding violently, big-eyed, her mouth pursed
up small. The delight of revelation, and the bliss of possessing
a secret, run each other very close. But the latter
generally wins--for a time.

I had passed the mutton stage and was weltering in warm rice
pudding, before I found leisure to pause and take in things
generally; and then a glance in the direction of the window told
me, to my dismay, that it was raining hard. This was annoying in
every way, for, even if it cleared up later, the worms--I knew
well from experience--would be offensively numerous and frisky.
Sulkily I said grace and accompanied the others upstairs to the
schoolroom; where I got out my paint-box and resolved to devote
myself seriously to Art, which of late I had much neglected.
Harold got hold of a sheet of paper and a pencil, retired to a
table in the corner, squared his elbows, and protruded his
tongue. Literature had always been HIS form of artistic
expression.

Selina had a fit of the fidgets, bred of the unpromising weather,
and, instead of settling down to something on her own account,
must needs walk round and annoy us artists, intent on embodying
our conceptions of the ideal. She had been looking over my
shoulder some minutes before I knew of it; or I would have had a
word or two to say upon the subject.