“Master Dan,” cried Jabez piteously, “if you don’t stop to once, the little bit of brain I’ve got’ll be addled!  Iss, my word, addled beyond recovery, and me a poor man with my living to get.”

“It do put me in mind of my old granny,” said Grace, laughing, “when poor grandfather died, and she was getting her bit of mourning.  ‘Well,’ she saith, ’if my poor dear Samuel had died a week sooner or later, and Miss Peek had put her clearance sale back or fore a week, I should have missed that there remlet of merino and lost a good bargain, whereas now it’ll always be a pleasure to me to look at and feel I saved two shillings on it.’”

“Now, Fanny,” cried Dan, “a story from you, please.”

Fanny demurred a little, of course.  People never like to be told to tell stories.  They prefer to drift naturally into them, without a lot of people waiting expectantly for what they are going to say.

But Fanny had such stores of tales of ghosts, fairies, witches, and other thrilling subjects, that she never failed to fascinate her listeners.  She did so now, when once she had begun, until they were all almost afraid to look round the dim kitchen, and Jabez wished, though he would not have owned it, that he had not got that walk home in the dark.

Then they burnt nuts, and melted lead in an iron spoon and poured it into tumblers of cold water, and Fanny’s took the shape of the masts and rigging of a ship, though Jabez declared it wasn’t nothing of the sort, but was more like clothes-postens with the lines stretched to them, yes, and the very clothes themselves hanging to them.  All but Jabez, though, preferred to think it a ship; it was more exciting.  Grace’s lead formed tents of all sizes, and Grace seemed quite pleased.

Of Kitty’s they could make nothing at all.

“That looks to me like a rolling-pin lying at the bottom,” cried Dan excitedly, “and a beautiful palace, almost like a fairy palace, and—­but I don’t know what all those little pieces can be meant for.  I think it must mean that you are going to be a cook in a large house—­a palace, perhaps.”

“I fink those are fairies,” chimed in Tony thoughtfully, “and that’s a fairy palace, and—­and—­”

“And the rolling-pin is me in the midst of it all,” cried Kitty, throwing her arm round her little brother.  “Tony, you are a dear; you always say something nice.”

“I shouldn’t think it very nice to be called a rolling-pin,” said Betty.  “But do tell me what mine is, Kitty!”

“I really can’t,” said Kitty, after they had each gazed at it solemnly.  “I can’t tell whether it is meant for a ship, or an iceberg, or a tent.  Perhaps it is all three, and means that you are going to travel, Bettikins.”

“Oh yes,” said Betty, “I shouldn’t be surprised.  I mean to travel when I am grown up, and I always feel that I shall do something some day.”

“I feel I shall do something to-night if I don’t get something to eat soon,” interrupted Dan, in a tone intended to touch Fanny’s heart.  “It is half-past eight, and tea has been over for more than two hours.”