“What on earth are these things?” she said. But Phyl and Dolly turned a deep uncomfortable red, and remained speechless.
Almost a year later, however, the mother came upon the pair sitting in the corner of the garden, the identical pieces of wood on their knees or strewn around them. Her footfall had been so light neither of the children heard her.
Both were murmuring, murmuring at the same time, neither exactly listening to the other, and yet there was such close connection between the games of the two that it is doubtful if either could have been played apart.
“Annabella is dwessing for the ball,” Dolly was [178] ]murmuring. “Purple satin, and a bouquet of dahlias and poppies.” “Oh, there you are, Muriel, I see you are dwessed—what a poor ugly dwess, but I suppose you can’t afford a better, as you’re only a governess.” “Muriel is attired in pure white clinging muslin, with one moss-wose in her hair.” And so on, and so on. Phyl’s fair little face was ashine with the excitement of her game. “So he plunged madly in the river,” she was murmuring, her hand at the same time making a dive with a scrap of wood attired in blue serge, “and Geraldine was floating along, her hair streaming on the water; she had sunk six times, and only had strength to put her arm round his neck before she fainted.
“He swam to the shore with his lovely burden, and there stood Luke Robespierre, and he had cut a leak in her boat. Sir Guy Redcliffe strode up to him, he put Lady Geraldine in a safe place first. ‘You traitor, and villain,’ he cried, and rushed upon him” (two bits of wood were banged forcibly together). “Luke drew a dagger from his sleeve, but Sir Guy brushed it aside, pulled his pistol from his pocket, and shot him through the heart.”
“But,” said the mother, stepping between them, her sense of humour overcoming everything else, “don’t you think, Phyl, the powder would be wet after that long swim?”
Phyl’s face went scarlet. Dolly, at the first footstep—for might it not be one of those dreadful [179] ]boys?—swept her wooden family into a hasty heap and thrust them into her pocket.
But the mother when her smile had died looked a little troubled. They seemed such big girls—Phyl was nearly thirteen—to be playing in so childish a manner; and the absurd stuff they were talking, where they had read or picked up such nonsense she could not tell,—who knew where such foolishness would end?
“My dears,” she said, “I really think you are too old to play like this now. I do not often cross your wishes, do I?—but I must ask you both to throw those things quite away.”
She talked to them a little longer, and they both felt ashamed of their silliness.