"What do you want me to know?" said Matilda. "I'll help all I can."
"How much do you know about games? Can you play 'What's my thought like?' or 'Consequences?' or anything?"
"I never played games much," said Matilda, with a sudden feeling of inferiority. "I never had much chance."
"I dare say!" said Judy. "I knew that before I came. Well of course you can't act proverbs. You don't know anything."
"What is it?" said Matilda. "Tell me. Perhaps I can learn."
"You can't learn in a minute," said Judy with a slight toss of her head, which indeed was much given to wagging in various directions.
"But tell me, please."
"Well, there's no harm in that. We choose a proverb, of course, first; for instance the boys are going to play 'It's ill talking between a full man and a fasting.' This is how they are going to do it. Nobody knows, you understand, what the proverb is, but they must guess it. Norton will be a rich man who wants to buy a piece of land; and David is the man who owns the land and has come to see him; but he has come a good way, and he is without his dinner, and he feels as cross as can be, and no terms will suit him. So they talk and talk, and disagree and quarrel and are ridiculous; till at last Norton finds out that Davy hasn't dined; and then he orders up everything in the house he can think of, that is good, and makes him eat; and when he has eaten everything and drunk wine and they are cracking nuts, then Norton begins again about the piece of land; and the poor man is so comfortable now he is willing to sell anything he has got; and Norton gets it for his own price. Won't it be good?"
"I should think it would be very interesting," said Matilda; whom indeed the description interested mightily. "But how could I help? I don't see."
"O not in that you couldn't, of course; Davy and Norton don't want any help, I guess, from anybody; they know all about it. But I want you to help me. I wonder if you can. I don't believe you can, either. I shall have to get somebody else."