"Oh! I don't mean that," the young man said. "I mean quite another sort of playing."
"Games?" Lady Constance inquired. "I am afraid I am rather stupid about games. I find it so difficult to remember numbers and words, and I never can make a ball go where I want it to, somehow."
"I was not thinking of games either, exactly," Richard said, smiling.
The girl stared at him in some perplexity. Then spoke again, with the same little effect of determined civility.
"I am very fond of dancing and of skating. The ice was very good on the lake at Whitney this winter. Rupert and Gerry were home from Eton, and Eddy had brought a young man down with him—Mr. Hubbard—-who is in his business in Liverpool, and a friend of my brother Guy's was staying in the house too, from India. I think you have met him—Mr. Decies. We skated till past twelve one night—a Wednesday, I think. There was a moon, and a great many stars. The thermometer registered fifteen degrees of frost Mr. Decies told me. But I was not cold. It was very beautiful."
Richard shifted his position. The organ had moved farther away. Uncheered by further copper showers, it droned again slumberously, while the murmur sent forth by the thousand activities of the great city waxed loud, for the moment, and hoarsely insistent.
"I do not bore you?" Lady Constance asked, in sudden anxiety.
"Oh no, no!" Richard answered. "I am glad to have you tell me about yourself, if you will; and all that you care for."
Thus encouraged, the girl took up her little parable again, her sweet, rather vacant, face growing almost animated as she spoke.
"We did something else I liked very much, but from what Alicia said afterwards I am afraid I ought not to have liked it. One day it snowed, and we all played hide-and-seek. There are a number of attics in the roof of the bachelor's wing at Whitney, and there are long up-and-down passages leading round to the old nurseries. Mama did not mind, but Alicia was very displeased. She said it was a mere excuse for romping. But that was not true. Of course we never thought of romping. We did make a great noise," she added conscientiously, "but that was Rupert and Gerry's fault. They would jump out after promising not to, and of course it was impossible to help screaming. Eddy's Liverpool friend tried to jump out too, but Maggie snubbed him. I think he deserved it. You ought to play fair; don't you think so? After promising, you would never jump out, would you?"