"I wonder of what the poor old fellow was thinking as he banged away at his tambourine last night!" Reggie said.
Shortly after Mrs. Day had left her husband sitting in his stocking-feet over the breakfast-room fire, she, in the midst of her children at their several occupations but attentive to what went on beyond, heard his heavy step in the hall, heard the front door open and close.
"Your father has gone to the club, after all," she said, and gave a sigh of relief as she worked away at her embroidery, making holes in a strip of muslin and stitching round them, for the adornment of the elder daughter's petticoat. She was a timid woman, in spite of her fine and handsome appearance, with a great fear of the unusual. It was her husband's habit to go out. The thought of him sitting alone and idle in the other room had been weighing on her mind.
The children paid no attention; they were all a little tired and languid and disinclined for their usual amusements after the excitement of last night's dance and the exertion of their morning on the ice. Even Deleah, the reader of the family, neglected her book to lie back in her chair and gaze into the fire, the music of galop, and rattle of her father's tambourine humming in her ears; before her eyes figures chasing each other over the blue sheet of ice or flying rhythmically over polished boards.
Franky having temporarily deserted his paint-box and the _Illustrated News_ he had designed to colour for many tinted sheets of gelatine, saved from the crackers on last night's supper table, now held them in turn before his eyes. "Mama, you're all red--all lovely red, like roses," or "Bessie, you're frightful--you're white as if you felt sick," he cried, accordingly as a red or a green transparency was before his eyes.
The game called "Tactics," over which Bessie and Bernard nightly quarrelled, had been so far neglected; a circumstance not to be regretted, since Bessie generally played a losing game in tears, and signalised Bernard's victory by upsetting the board and flinging the red and white ivory pegs in his face.
For, the last night's dance, which had been an engrossing topic for several weeks before it had come off, now that it was over must still be talked about.