"Ugh!" she said. "Ugly!"

 

"Beast," I added, in order that there should be no doubt about what we thought. "Utter and deliberate beast."

 

We had arranged for a particularly pleasant day. We were to have sailed across to the mouth of the—I always forget its name, and then up the river to the famous old castle of-of-no, it's gone again; but anyhow, there was to have been a bathe in the river, and lunch, and a little exploration in the dinghy, and a lesson in the Morse code from Simpson, and tea in the woods with a real fire, and in the cool of the evening a ripping run home before the wind. But now the only thing that seemed certain was the cool of the evening.

 

"We'll light a fire and do something indoors," said Dahlia.

 

"This is an extraordinary house," said Archie. "There isn't a single book in it, except a lot of Strand¹ Magazines for 1907. That must have been a very wet year."

 

"We can play games, dear."

 

"True, darling. Let's do a charade²."

 

"The last time I played charades³," I said, "I was Horatius, the

front part of Elizabeth's favourite palfrey, the arrow which shot

Rufus, Jonah, the two little Princes in the Tower, and Mrs

Pankhurst."

"Which was your favourite part?" asked Myra.

 

"The front part of the palfrey. But I was very good as the two little Princes."

 

"It's no good doing charades, if there's nobody to do them to."

 

"Thomas is coming to-morrow," said Myra. "We could tell him all about it."

 

"Clumps⁴ is a jolly good game," suggested Simpson.

 

"The last time I was a clump," I said, "I was the first coin paid on account of the last pair of boots, sandals, or whatnot of the man who laid the first stone of the house where lived the prettiest aunt of the man who reared the goose which laid the egg from which came the goose which provided the last

分享到：