"
The table was likewise common to all; but one of the laws of the
place was that everything left there after twelve o'clock on Saturday
was, as Babie's little mouth rolled out the long words, "confiscated
by the inexorable Eumenides."
"And who are they?" asked Mr. Ogilvie, who was always much
entertained by the simplicity with which the little maid uttered the
syllables as if they were her native speech.
"Janet, and Nurse, and Emma," she said; "and they really are inex-o-
rable. They threw away my snail shell that a thrush had been eating,
though I begged and prayed them."
"Yes, and my femur of a rabbit," said Armine, "and said it was a
nasty old bone, and the baker's Pincher ate it up; but I did find my
turtle-dove's egg in the ash-heap, and discovered it over again, and
you don't see it is broken now; it is stuck down on a card."
"Yes," said his mother, "it is wonderful how valuable things become
precisely at twelve on Saturday."
Each had some department: Janet's, which was geology, was the
fullest, as she had inherited some youthful hoards of her father's;
Bobus's, which was botany, was the neatest and most systematic. Mary
thought at first that it did not suit him; but she soon saw that with
him it was not love of flowers, but the study of botany.
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