“There are more ways of speaking than one,” said Lady Staveley. “You and Mr. Graham understand each other, I think.”
“Oh, I was caught quite fairly,” said Marian—“and now lead me round and round.” To her at any rate the festivities of Christmas-day were not too ponderous for real enjoyment.
And then, at last, somebody caught the judge. I rather think it was Madeline; but his time in truth was come, and he had no chance of escape. The whole room was set upon his capture, and though he barricaded himself with chairs and children, he was duly apprehended and named. “That’s papa; I know by his watch-chain, for I made it.”
“Nonsense, my dears,” said the judge. “I will do no such thing. I should never catch anybody, and should remain blind forever.”
“But grandpapa must,” said Marian. “It’s the game that he should be blinded when he’s caught.”
“Suppose the game was that we should be whipped when we are caught, and I was to catch you,” said Augustus.
“But I would not play that game,” said Marian.
“Oh, papa, you must,” said Madeline. “Do—and you shall catch Mr. Furnival.”
“That would be a temptation,” said the judge. “I’ve never been able to do that yet, though I’ve been trying it for some years.”
“Justice is blind,” said Graham. “Why should a judge be ashamed to follow the example of his own goddess?” And so at last the owner of the ermine submitted, and the stern magistrate of the bench was led round with the due incantation of the spirits, and dismissed into chaos to seek for a new victim.
One of the rules of blindman’s buff at Noningsby was this, that it should not be played by candlelight—a rule that is in every way judicious, as thereby an end is secured for that which might otherwise be unending. And therefore when it became so dark in the schoolroom that there was not much difference between the blind man and the others, the handkerchief was smuggled away, and the game was at an end.
“And now for snapdragon,” said Marian.
“Exactly as you predicted, Mr. Graham,” said Madeline: “blindman’s buff at a quarter past three, and snapdragon at five.”
“I revoke every word that I uttered, for I was never more amused in my life.”
“And you will be prepared to endure the wine and sweet cake when they come.”
“Prepared to endure anything, and go through everything. We shall be allowed candles now, I suppose.”
“Oh, no, by no means. Snapdragon by candlelight! who ever heard of such a thing? It would wash all the dragon out of it, and leave nothing but the snap. It is a necessity of the game that it should be played in the dark—or rather by its own lurid light.”
“Oh, there is a lurid light; is there?”
“You shall see;” and then she turned away to make her preparations.
To the game of snapdragon, as played at Noningsby, a ghost was always necessary, and aunt Madeline had played the ghost ever since she had been an aunt, and there had been any necessity for such a part. But in previous years the spectators had been fewer in number and more closely connected with the family. “I think we must drop the ghost on this occasion,” she said, coming up to her brother.
“You’ll disgust them all dreadfully if you do,” said he. “The young Sebrights have come specially to see the ghost.”
“Well, you can do ghost for them.”
“I! no; I can’t act a ghost. Miss Furnival, you’d make a lovely ghost.”
“I shall be most happy to be useful,” said Sophia.
“Oh, aunt Mad, you must be ghost,” said Marian, following her.
“You foolish little thing, you; we are going to have a beautiful ghost—a divine ghost,” said uncle Gus.
“But we want Madeline to be the ghost,” said a big Miss Sebright, ten or eleven years old.
“She’s always ghost,” said Marian.
“To be sure; it will be much better,” said Miss Furnival. “I only offered my poor services hoping to be useful. No Banquo that ever lived could leave a worse ghost behind him than I should prove.”
It ended in there being two ghosts. It had become quite impossible to rob Miss Furnival of her promised part, and Madeline could not refuse to solve the difficulty in this way without making more of the matter than it deserved. The idea of two ghosts was delightful to the children, more especially as it entailed two large dishes full of raisins, and two blue fires blazing up from burnt brandy. So the girls went out, not without proffered assistance from the gentlemen, and after a painfully long interval of some fifteen or twenty minutes—for Miss Furnival’s back hair would not come down and adjust itself into ghostlike lengths with as much readiness as that of her friend—they returned bearing the dishes before them on large trays. In each of them the spirit was lighted as they entered the schoolroom door, and thus, as they walked in, they were illuminated by the dark-blue flames which they carried.
“Oh, is it not grand?” said Marian, appealing to Felix Graham.
“Uncommonly grand,” he replied.
“And which ghost do you think is the grandest? I’ll tell you which ghost I like the best—in a secret, you know; I like aunt Mad the best, and I think she’s the grandest too.”
“And I’ll tell you in a secret that I think the same. To my mind she is the grandest ghost I ever saw in my life.”
“Is she indeed?” asked Marian, solemnly, thinking probably that her new friend’s experience in ghosts must be extensive. However that might be, he thought that as far as his experience in women went, he had never seen anything more lovely than Madeline Staveley dressed in a long white sheet, with a long bit of white cambric pinned round her face.
And it may be presumed that the
