Myra gazed out of the window upon the driving rain and shook her
head at the weather.
"Ugh!" she said. "Ugly!"
"Beast," I added, in order that there should be no doubt about what
we thought. "Utter and deliberate beast."
We had arranged for a particularly pleasant day. We were to have
sailed across to the mouth of the--I always forget its name, and
then up the river to the famous old castle of-of-no, it's gone
again; but anyhow, there was to have been a bathe in the river, and
lunch, and a little exploration in the dinghy, and a lesson in the
Morse code from Simpson, and tea in the woods with a real fire, and
in the cool of the evening a ripping run home before the wind. But
now the only thing that seemed certain was the cool of the evening.
"We'll light a fire and do something indoors," said Dahlia.
"This is an extraordinary house," said Archie. "There isn't a single
book in it, except a lot of Strand Magazines for 1907. That must
have been a very wet year."
"We can play games, dear."
"True, darling. Let's do a charade."
"The last time I played charades," I said, "I was Horatius, the
front part of Elizabeth's favourite palfrey, the arrow which shot
Rufus, Jonah, the two little Princes in the Tower, and Mrs
Pankhurst."
"Which was your favourite part?" asked Myra.
"The front part of the palfrey. But I was very good as the two
little Princes."
"It's no good doing charades, if there's nobody to do them to."
"Thomas is coming to-morrow," said Myra. "We could tell him all
about it."
"Clumps is a jolly good game," suggested Simpson.
"The last time I was a clump," I said, "I was the first coin paid on
account of the last pair of boots, sandals, or whatnot of the man
who laid the first stone of the house where lived the prettiest aunt
of the man who reared the goose which laid the egg from which came
the goose which provided the last quill pen used by the third man
Shakespeare met on the second Wednesday in June, 1595."
"He mightn't have had an aunt," said Myra, after a minute's profound
thought.
"He hadn't."
"Well, anyhow, one way and another you've had a very adventurous
career, my lad," said Archie. "What happened the last time you
played ludo?"
"When I played clumps," put in Simpson, "I was the favourite spoke
of Hall Caine's first bicycle. They guessed Hall Caine and the
bicycle and the spoke very quickly, but nobody thought of suggesting
the favourite spoke."
Myra went to the window again, and came back with the news that it
would probably be a fine evening.
"Thank you," we all said.
"But I wasn't just making conversation. I have an idea."
"Silence for Myra's idea."
"Well, it's this. If we can't do anything without an audience, and
if the audience won't come to us, let's go to them."
"Be a little more lucid, there's a dear. It isn't that we aren't
trying."
"Well then, let's serenade the other houses about here to-night."
There was a powerful silence while everybody considered this.
"Good," said Archie at last. "We will."
The rest of the morning and all the afternoon were spent in
preparations. Archie and Myra were all right; one plays the banjo
and the other the guitar. (It is a musical family, the Mannerings.)
Simpson keeps a cornet which he generally puts in his bag, but I
cannot remember anyone asking him to play it. If the question has
ever arisen, he has probably been asked not to play it. However, he
would bring it out to-night. In any case he has a tolerable voice;
while Dahlia has always sung like an angel. In short, I was the
chief difficulty.
"I suppose there wouldn't be time to learn the violin?" I asked.
"Why didn't they teach you something when you were a boy?" wondered
Myra.
"They did. But my man forgot to put it in my bag when he packed. He
put in two tooth-brushes and left out the triangle. Do you think
there's a triangle shop in the village? I generally play on an
isosceles one, any two sides of which are together greater than the
third. Likewise the angles which are opposite to the adjacent sides,
each to each."
"Well, you must take the cap round for the money."
"I will. I forgot to say that my own triangle at home, the Strad, is
in the chromatic scale of A, and has a splice. It generally gets the
chromatics very badly in the winter."
While the others practised their songs, I practised taking the cap
round, and by tea-time we all knew our parts perfectly. I had
received permission to join in the choruses, and I was also to be
allowed to do a little dance with Myra. When you think that I had
charge of the financial arrangements as well, you can understand
that I felt justified in considering myself the leader of the
troupe.
"In fact," I said, "you ought to black your faces so as to
distinguish yourselves from me."
"We won't black our faces," said Dahlia, "but we'll wear masks; and
we might each carry a little board explaining why we're doing this."
"Right," said Archie; and he sat down and wrote a notice for
himself--
"I AM AN ORPHAN. SO ARE THE OTHERS, BUT THEY ARE NOT SO ORPHAN AS I
AM. I AM EXTREMELY FREQUENT."