'Nothing of the kind.'
'How then?' said Captain Lancaster, with an appearance of great interest. 'One does not lose a pleasure—and such a pleasure—without at least begging to know why. If it is permitted. We began to think that the witches must have got hold of you in that dark room.'
'One did,' said the girl, so gravely that Captain Lancaster was posed. She knew perfectly well what ears were listening; but there was something in her nature which always disdained to creep out of a difficulty; so she stood still, and answered as he had spoken, aloud.
'O, Miss Kennedy,' cried Molly Seaton, 'that's a fib. Not a real witch?'
'Pretty genuine, I think,' said Hazel, with her half laugh.
Now there is no way in the world to puzzle people like telling them the truth. The gentleman and the lady were puzzled. Stuart Nightingale and half a dozen more came up at the instant; and the question of the game to be played, for the time scattered all other questions.
For a while now the little green at Chickaree was a pretty sight. Dotted with a moving crowd of figures, in gay-coloured dresses, moving in graceful lines or standing in pretty attitudes; the play, the shifting of places, the cries and the laughter, all made a flashing, changing picture, full of life and full of picturesque prettiness. The interests of the game were at first absorbing. When a long match had been played, however, and there was a pause for refreshments, there was also a chance for rolling balls in the more airy manner Wych Hazel had indicated.
'What was the matter the other night?' Stuart Nightingale demanded softly, as he brought the little lady of the house an ice.
'I could not stay.'
'Summoned home by no disaster?'—