Hide and Seek

Bless your heart! it's no trouble to me. I'm always moving about at home from morning to night, to prevent myself getting fatter. Don't say no, Mr. Blyth, unless you are afraid of trusting an old gossip like me alone with your visitors.'

The last words were intended as a sarcasm, and were whispered into Valentine's ear. He understood the allusion to their private conversation together easily enough; and felt that unless he let her have her own way without further contest, he must risk offending an old friend by implying a mistrust of her, which would be simply ridiculous, under the circumstances in which they were placed. So, when his wife nodded to him to take advantage of the offer just made, he accepted it forthwith.

'Now, I'll stop his giving Mary a Hair Bracelet!' thought Mrs. Peckover, as she bustled out after young Thorpe, and closed the room door behind her.

'Wait a bit, young gentleman,' she said, arresting his further progress on the first landing. 'Just leave off talking a minute, and let me speak. I've got something to say to you. Do you really mean to give Mary that Hair Bracelet?'

'Oho! then you did hear something at the card-table about it, after all?' said Zack. 'Mean? Of course I mean —'

'And you want to put some of my hair in it?'

'To be sure I do! Madonna wouldn't like it without.'

'Then you had better make up your mind at once to give her some other present; for not one morsel of my hair shall you have. There now! what do you think of that?'

'I don't believe it, my old darling.'

'It's true enough, I can tell you. Not a hair of my head shall you have.'

'Why not?'

'Never mind why. I've got my own reasons.'

'Very well: if you come to that, I've got my reasons for giving the bracelet; and I mean to give it. If you won't let any of your hair be plaited up along with the rest, it's Madonna you will disappoint—not me.'

Mrs. Peckover saw that she must change her tactics, or be defeated.

'Don't you be so dreadful obstinate, Master Zack, and I'll tell you the reason,' she said in an altered tone, leading the way lower down into the passage. 'I don't want you to give her a Hair Bracelet, because I believe it will bring ill-luck to her—there!'

Zack burst out laughing. 'Do you call that a reason? Who ever heard of a Hair Bracelet being an unlucky gift?'

At this moment, the door of Mrs. Blyth's room opened.

'Anything wrong with the lock?' asked Valentine from above. He was rather surprised at the time that elapsed without his hearing the house-door shut.

'All quite right, sir,' said Mrs. Peckover; adding in a whisper to Zack:—'Hush! don't say a word!'

'Don't let him keep you in the cold with his nonsense,' said Valentine.

'My nonsense!—' began Zack, indignantly.

'He's going, sir,' interrupted Mrs. Peckover. 'I shall be upstairs in a moment.'

'Come in, dear, pray! You're letting all the cold air into the room,' exclaimed the voice of Mrs. Blyth.

The door of the room closed again.

'What are you driving at?' asked Zack, in extreme bewilderment.

'I only want you to give her some other present,' said Mrs. Peckover, in her most persuasive tones. 'You may think it all a whim of mine, if you like—I dare say I'm an old fool; but I don't want you to give her a Hair Bracelet.'

'A whim of yours!!!' repeated Zack, with a look which made Mrs. Peckover's cheeks redden with rising indignation. 'What! a woman at your time of life subject to whims! My darling Peckover, it won't do! My mind's made up to give her the Hair Bracelet. Nothing in the world can stop me—except, of course, Madonna's having a Hair Bracelet already, which I know she hasn't.'

'Oh! you know that, do you, you mischievous Imp? Then, for once in a way, you just know wrong!' exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, losing her temper altogether.

'You don't mean to say so? How very remarkable, to think of her having a Hair Bracelet already, and of my not knowing it!—Mrs. Peckover,' continued Zack, mimicking the tone and manner of his old clerical enemy, the Reverend Aaron Yollop, 'what I am now about to say grieves me deeply; but I have a solemn duty to discharge, and in the conscientious performance of that duty, I now unhesitatingly express my conviction that the remark you have just made is—a flam.'

'It isn't—Monkey!' returned Mrs. Peckover, her anger fairly boiling over, as she nodded her head vehemently in Zack's face.

Just then, Valentine's step became audible in the room above; first moving towards the door, then suddenly retreating from it, as if he had been called back.

'I hav'n't let out what I oughtn't, have I?' thought Mrs. Peckover; calming down directly, when she heard the movement upstairs.

'Oh, you stick to it, do you?' continued Zack. 'It's rather odd, old lady, that Mrs. Blyth should have said nothing about this newly-discovered Hair Bracelet of yours while I was talking to her. But she doesn't know, of course: and Valentine doesn't know either, I suppose? By Jove! he's not gone to bed yet: I'll run back, and ask him if Madonna really has got a Hair Bracelet!'

'For God's sake don't!—don't say a word about it, or you'll get me into dreadful trouble!' exclaimed Mrs.