Although Muffin and Jim Lascelles were absolved from singing solos, they were unable wholly to evade the penalty incurred by the revelation of their gifts. They were haled to the piano to sing a duet from H.M.S. Pinafore; and made such a hopeless mess of the performance that Jim’s mother, to whom the accompaniment was intrusted, took the extreme course of closing the piano in the middle of it and retiring in dudgeon.
A display of thought-reading concluded the proceedings. The Vicar’s wife was a clairvoyante, noted for miles around. Cheriton also confessed to powers in this occult science. The Vicar’s wife was only permitted to perform one feat, because the Vicar declared that if she attempted more than one in an evening it excited her so much that she never slept all night. The task allotted to her was that she should take the ribbon from Ponto’s neck and tie it around Goose’s finger. The feat was performed with such exemplary ease that Muffin felt sure that she could do something. Her task was the elementary one of giving Miss Burden a kiss. Instead of doing this, however, she hugged Aunt Caroline. In the opinion, however, of those best acquainted with these mysteries, she was held to be so nearly right that her reputation was established forthwith.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” said Goose, with dilated eyes. “I shall write to dearest papa about it. At the next entertainment in Slocum Magna parish-room Muffin will have to do something.”
“I think,” said Jim’s mother, “her powers as a clairvoyante are superior to her powers as a cantatrice.”
Muffin was showing a desire to give a further display of her newly discovered talent, when Aunt Caroline said it was half-past ten, and that Araminta and Elizabeth must retire.
After saluting Aunt Caroline in a very dutiful manner they obeyed this edict with most admirable docility. It proved a signal for the general dispersal of the company. There is reason to believe that Aunt Caroline intended that it should.
No sooner were the Vicar and his wife and Jim Lascelles and his mother abroad in the rapt summer stillness, and they were picking their way through the tomblike darkness of the wood towards Pen-y-Gros hamlet, than the inmates of the castle sat down to the green table. Caroline Crewkerne yawned vigorously. But her opponents did well not to misinterpret that action, because this old woman was never known to sit down to cards without proving herself to be more than usually wide-awake.
“Caroline,” said her oldest friend, “this is certainly one of the whitest days in all my recollection of you. I can’t say positively that you were genial, but I feel that I am entitled to affirm that you got through the evening without insulting anybody.”
“The middle classes are so tiresome,” said Caroline, cutting for the deal and winning it easily.
“The middle classes are almost extinct as a genus,” said Cheriton. “They have assimilated culture so rapidly since that fellow Arnold wrote to them upon the subject that nowadays they are almost as extinct as the dodo.”