“Well⁠—oh⁠—well⁠—why, there was a great deal of fighting, and they were all blockheads, and⁠—I can’t tell it just how you told it⁠—but they wanted a man to be captain and king and everything⁠—”

“Dictator, now,” said Letty, with injured looks, and not without a wish to make her mother repent.

“Very well, dictator!” said Ben, contemptuously. “But that isn’t a good word: he didn’t tell them to write on slates.”

“Come, come, Ben, you are not so ignorant as that,” said Mrs. Garth, carefully serious. “Hark, there is a knock at the door! Run, Letty, and open it.”