“Oh, no,” said Lady Charles with an air of dismissal, “he’ll be delighted. And anyway if he flings it back in poor little Mike’s face, we’ve still got the pot.”
“True,” said Roberta, but she felt that there was a flaw somewhere in Lady Charles’s logic.
“We’ll all be in the drawing-room when he comes,” continued Lady Charles, “and I thought perhaps we might have some charades.”
“What!”
“I know it sounds mad, Robin, but you see he knows we’re rather mad and it’s no good pretending we’re not. And we’re all good at charades, you can’t deny it.”
Roberta remembered the charades in New Zealand, particularly one that presented the Garden of Eden. Lord Charles, with his glass in his eye, and an umbrella over his head to suggest the heat of the day, had enacted Adam. Henry was the serpent and the twins angels. Frid had entered into the spirit of the part of Eve and had worn almost nothing but a brassiere and a brown-paper fig-leaf. Lady Charles had found one of the false beards that the Lampreys could always be depended upon to produce and had made a particularly irritable deity. Patch had been the apple tree.
“Does he like charades?” asked Roberta.
“I don’t suppose he ever sees any, which is all to the good. We’ll make him feel gay. That’s poor old Gabriel’s trouble. He’s never gay enough.”
There was a tap at the door and Henry looked in.
“I thought you might like a good laugh,” said Henry. “The bum has come up the back stairs and caught poor old Daddy. He’s sitting in the kitchen with Baskett and the maids.”