'Oh, if you would it would be so kind of you. I'm afraid you don't know what you are exposing yourself to.'
Mark, not being devoted to children, felt more than a little dubious himself; but he wanted to be associated with her in something, and volunteered manfully.
'Look here,' he began, as they all stood about staring at him, 'Miss Langton's a little tired. I—I am going to play with you a little now. What shall we have, eh? Blind man's buff?'
But they had had that, and presently one small boy, bolder than the rest, said, 'Play at being Jumbo'—a proposal which seemed generally popular.
'Then may I leave you here?' said Mabel. 'I must go and speak to mother about something. Don't let them be too tiresome.'
This was by no means what Mark had bargained for; but he found himself deserted and reduced to 'play at being Jumbo' with the best possible grace. It was a simple but severe game, consisting in the performer of the principal rôle—who was Mark himself on this occasion—going down on his hands and knees and staggering about the carpet, while everyone else who could find room climbed on his back and thumped him on the head. At last, in self-defence, he was obliged to get rid of them by intimating that he had gone mad, when he had to justify his words by careering round the room trumpeting fiercely, while the children scuttled away before him in an ecstasy of sham terror. At first Mark was profoundly miserable, and even glad that Mabel had not remained to witness his humiliation; but by-and-by he began to enter into the spirit of the thing, and had entirely forgotten his dignity by the time Mabel reappeared. Caffyn (who had now returned from the Featherstones', and had received an invitation from Mrs. Langton in Mabel's absence: 'We've known him from a boy, my dear,' the former had said in justification, 'and he can recite some things to keep the children quiet, you know') stood in the doorway behind her, and looked on with a smile of pity, but she saw nothing ridiculous in Mark just then (and, as he was probably aware, he could stand such tests better than most men). She only thought that his willingness to sacrifice himself for others was a pleasant trait in his character.
'Don't get up, Ashburn; it's delightful to see you making yourself so hot, my dear fellow,' said Caffyn. 'One doesn't get the chance of seeing a successful author ramping about on all fours every day.'
'I can't get up,' said Mark; and in fact a small but unpleasantly sturdy boy had pounced on him as he paused for breath, and, with the sense that he was doing something courageous, was in course of taming the elephant with a hearth-brush.
'What a shame!' cried Mabel. 'Tommy, you horrid boy, you're hurting Mr. Ashburn.' And the hearth-brush was certainly coming down with considerable vigour on the small of the amateur elephant's back.
'I think myself,' gasped Mark, 'that I could bear being shipped off to America now.'