"Of course! and sprinkle sugar over it, and it is really delicious. I might have given you that plate you knocked over, but now—"
"It was the smallest, I remember."
"And, Jack, I made it all myself. No one else touched it. And all this marmalade, and three dozen pots of currant jelly, and four dozen of crab-apple."
"Sacred bird of Juno!" ejaculated her cousin.
"Do you dare call me a goose, sir?"
"She drove peacocks, didn't she? I do know a little mythology.
"But, Hildegarde, be serious now, will you? I'm in a peck of trouble, as Biddy says. I want consolation, or advice, or something."
"Sit down, and tell me," said Hildegarde, full of interest at once.
Jack sat down and drummed on the table, a thing that Hildegarde had never been allowed to do.
"I got a letter from Daddy, yesterday," he said, after a pause. "Herr Geigen is going to Germany now, in a week, and Daddy says I may go if Uncle Tom is willing."