“Jack is a very good actor,” said Lyndsay; “but children are apt to be fairly good actors and then to lose the gift. Ned is even better. The boys are fond of charades, and what we like best is to take the names of poets from Chaucer to Crabbe,—we have pretty well exhausted the list.”
“I have seen in France,” said Ellett, “a harder game than your plots. Two or three scenes are allowed, and what each is to include is stated. Then the actors endeavor to go through with each act so as to fulfil its dramatic purpose.”
“I trust,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, “no one will introduce that game.”
“It would be charming,” cried Rose.
“Come in, Archie,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, “and let us have our piquet. Anne and Rose will furnish quite as much talk as will suffice. I must have my revenge.”
“Certainly, my dear,” and he went in with his wife.
“Some time we must really try those plots,” said Rose. “Papa is too fond of the difficult ones. Imagine Hamlet furnishing evidence to the Psychical Society about his father’s ghost!”
“Does any one believe in ghosts nowadays?” asked Ellett.
“Pardy does,—look!” she said, laughing, and pointing through the open window. Lyndsay was pushing off from a burning candle the tall spikes of wax which stood unmelted on one side. “We are laughing at you, papa,” she cried.
“Are you?” he said, turning from his game. “I can’t stand a ghost in the candle: it is another relic of my Scotch education, Mr. Carington. It is bad luck to have a ghost on the candle. I have lost the belief, but the habit remains.”