“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.”