“Good day, Mees,” Gaston stammered.
But when Faith threw her arms round him and kissed his small pale face, he swiftly abandoned all formality and nestled up to her side, as if he had found a long-lost and sorely-missed shelter.
“I told you he was a good little boy,” said Marygold.
“A precious Molly, though,” remarked Andrew.
“Molly yourself,” retorted Jack, “come on now and let’s begin sport.”
“And you,” said Phil, turning to Marygold, “tell Gaston the rules of the game.”
These were of a delightfully simple nature.
“Fay’s our mother,” began Marygold, “and Hubert and you and I are her little children and we pretend that we’ve come into the wood to gaffer strawberries and pick up sticks. And we pretend that we don’t know there’s a wicked ogre’s den behind the bushes. He’s always wanting children to eat you know, so he sends out a bad man, that’s Jack—to catch us. When we see him coming, Phil, (that’s the old man of the wood who tries to protect us) comes to fight him off and we have to run away as fast as ever we can.”
“And we yell as loud as we can,” added Hubert, shrieking this item of information at the tip of his voice.
“There, now do you see, the wicked ogre has gone away to hide,” said Marygold, “with his wife, that’s Di, and his cook, that’s Phoena. So we’d better go to Fay. She’s dreadfully sorry when we get caught, but very often she gets caught herself.”