Peter and his wife, who knew the game, agreed. Mrs. Herbert seemed resigned to the worst, but Herbert, though faint, was still pursuing.
"But doesn't he guess what the proverb is?" he asked.
"Sometimes," I admitted. "But sometimes, if we are very, very clever, he doesn't. That, in fact, is the game."
Our host got up and went to the door.
"I think I see," he said; "and I want my pipe anyhow. So I'll go out first."
"Now then," said Celia, when the door was safely closed, "what shall we have?"
Of course you know this game, and you know the difficulty of thinking of a proverb which has no moss or stable-doors or glasshouses in it; all of them words which it is impossible to include naturally in an answer to an ordinary question. The proverbs which Mrs. Herbert suggested were full of moss.
"What about 'It's never too late to mend?'" said Mrs. Peter. "The only difficult word is 'mend.'"
"We mustn't have less than seven words, one for each of us."
"Can't we get something from Solomon for a change?" said Peter. "'A roaring lion is a calamity to its father, but the cautious man cometh not again.' That sort of thing."