“Yes, sir,” said Rollo, “I understand the nature of it now.”
Mr. Holiday then said that Lucy and Rollo might go into the other room, and that he was coming in himself pretty soon. So Lucy took their lamp, and they walked along into the front parlor.
Lucy saw, as soon as she entered the room, that her aunt was sitting near the cradle. Nathan was lying in the cradle asleep. Her aunt was reading, with her foot near the rocker, ready to rock him immediately in case he should move.
Rollo was going up immediately to his mother to ask her what she thought he and Lucy had better play. But then he concluded, on the whole, not to interrupt her; and he accordingly turned round and walked back to Lucy.
“Now, Lucy, what shall we do for the rest of the evening.”
“I don’t know,” said Lucy; “I expect it is very nearly time for Royal to come for me.”
“O no,” said Rollo, “not yet. It is only eight o’clock; and you are not going home until half after eight. We shall have time to play half an hour yet.”
Lucy admitted this, and Rollo proposed that Lucy should be a man walking in the woods, and that he should be a lion roaring at her, and frightening her. The tables and chairs were to be the trees.
Lucy agreed to this plan; and so Rollo got down, upon his hands and knees, under the table, and Lucy began to walk slowly back and forth, as if she was walking in the woods. She talked to herself all the time, as follows,—
“O dear! what a dark night! What a terrible dark night! And I am afraid that there are lions in these woods.”