Schillie.—"Call it what you like, so we may have some preserved. I could eat it for breakfast, dinner, and tea. Now, here are your boots and shoes growing on this Ita palm. Look, my knowing little book says the leaves are enclosed in cases, which serve for shoes, and this is the exact description of these tall fellows. Now, June, if we can only take some home to Jenny she will be as pleased as Punch, and so shall I, for I did not think your fidgetiness would end in such a fine encouraging manner."
Mother.—"But, good lack, as you say, how are we ever to get at them; this tree must be at least a hundred feet high, and all the others seem bigger, and all the leaves are at the top; almost sky-high they look."
Schillie.—"We must cut one down, there is no help for it. I will run home for a couple of hatchets, and mind you don't stir from hence until I return, and don't get eaten up, for your life, by anything."
Mother.—"Suppose you bring the girls with you; we shall never cut it down ourselves without aching all over, and they will be so glad to get out of school."
Schillie.—"I'll be bound they will. But first I shall say only those are to come out who have been good, for the pleasure of seeing Miss Gatty screw up her countenance into ineffable disgust, for I know she will have been naughty."
Mother.—"You know you will do nothing of the sort, but, on the contrary, say that Gatty is more wanted than the others."
Schillie.—"I confess I have a weakness for that child, she is so preposterously mischievous."
Mother.—"Now I have a weakness for her, because she is like the knights of old, 'the soul of honour.' Now she fires up, and now she ruins her pocket handkerchiefs if anything is said derogatory to her own country or to her Queen. Did you hear or rather see her this morning while they were reading their history, when Madame praised Napoleon Buonaparte at the expense of the Duke of Wellington?"
Schillie.—"Yes. I misdoubt me that I shall find her in sad disgrace. She will have endeavoured to soothe her wounded feelings by putting spiders on Sybil, changing Serena's book, mislaying Madame's alderman, which is neither more nor less than the name Gatty has given that great fat pencil with which Madame marks their books, and rat-ta-ta-tals them up when they are looking dull and stupid."
Mother.—"Don't come without her, however, for she is the strongest. It's a pity Sybil is so good as never to be in disgrace, for her little delicate fingers are of no use in such a case."