Then from the leafy depths of an old oak, Phil gave the signal for the game to begin.
“My little dears,” he cried, “come out to play.”
“That means, come out to be eaten,” said Hubert.
Therewith Gaston, who by this time was not so sure that this new form of amusement was likely to prove so very charming, was dragged off to play his part in the ogre game.
“It really is quite strordinary fun,” Hubert assured him.
CHAPTER IX.
“QUITE ’STRORDINARY FUN.”
CERTAINLY if ear-piercing shrieks constituted “strordinary fun” Hubert’s statement was fully justified.
From the very onset the game was wildly exciting, even to the bigger boys. Even Phil, as he jeered the ogre from the tall oak, forgot to call it a baby game, and as Jack executed his “flying squirrel trick,” which meant taking flying leaps from branch to branch, in order to view the land, he began to think that, after all, this sport with the infants was rather fine.
Faith, meanwhile, played her part as an anxious parent perfectly. Hither and thither she fluttered between the different points of danger, with out-stretched arms and skirts, like a good old hen protecting her precious bantlings.
In and out of the hazel bushes and the briar tangles—ay, even into nettle-beds—the infants dashed, caring nothing for pricks and stings and scratches, so long as they could evade the long arm of Jack, the ogre’s caterer, and escape the fierce eyes of the ogre and his wife. These latter would now and again show themselves, glaring ferociously through the bushes, and clamouring loudly for fresh food to be brought to their larder.