water, receiving a reckless supply from the tap in the passage. The
maid's scream of 'What will your aunt say?' was answered by her
appearance, and rush to turn the cock.

'Don't, don't, Aunt Jane,' shouted Fergus; 'I've almost done it!
Perpetual motion.' He seemed quite unconscious that the motion was
kept up by his own hands, and even dismay could not turn him from
being triumphant.

'Oh! Miss Jane,' cried Mrs. Mount, 'if I had thought what they boys
was after.'

'Mop it up, Alice,' said Aunt Jane to the younger girl. 'No don't
come up, Ada; it is too wet for you. It is only a misdirected
experiment in hydraulics.'

'I told him not,' said Clement Varley, thinking affairs serious.

'Fergus, I am shocked at you,' said Gillian sternly. 'You are
frightfully wet. You must be sent to bed.'

'You must go and change,' said Aunt Jane, preventing the howl about
to break forth. 'My dear boy, that tap must be let alone. We can't
have cataracts on the stairs.'

'I didn't mean it, Aunt Jane; I thought it was an invention,' said
Fergus.

'I know; but another time come and ask me where to try your
experiments. Go and take off those clothes; and you, Clement, you