[Illustration: '_But yester-eve and the mummers were here!_']
This morning, house-bound by the relentless indefatigable snow, I was feeling the reaction. Edward, on the contrary, being violently stage-struck on this his first introduction to the real Drama, was striding up and down the floor, proclaiming 'Here be I, King Gearge the Third,' in a strong Berkshire accent. Harold, accustomed, as the youngest, to lonely antics and to sports that asked no sympathy, was absorbed in 'clubmen': a performance consisting in a measured progress round the room arm-in-arm with an imaginary companion of reverend years, with occasional halts at imaginary clubs, where--imaginary steps being leisurely ascended--imaginary papers were glanced at, imaginary scandal was discussed with elderly shakings of the head, and--regrettable to say--imaginary glasses were lifted lipwards. Heaven only knows how the germ of this dreary pastime first found way into his small-boyish being. It was his own invention, and he was proportionately proud of it. Meanwhile Charlotte and I, crouched in the window-seat, watched, spell-stricken, the whirl and eddy and drive of the innumerable snow-flakes, wrapping our cheery little world in an uncanny uniform, ghastly in line and hue.
Charlotte was sadly out of spirits. Having 'countered' Miss Smedley at breakfast, during some argument or other, by an apt quotation from her favourite classic (the _Fairy Book_), she had been gently but firmly informed that no such things as fairies ever really existed. 'Do you mean to say it's all lies?' asked Charlotte bluntly. Miss Smedley deprecated the use of any such unladylike words in any connexion at all. 'These stories had their origin, my dear,' she explained, 'in a mistaken anthropomorphism in the interpretation of nature. But though we are now too well informed to fall into similar errors, there are still many beautiful lessons to be learned from these myths----'
'But how can you learn anything,' persisted Charlotte, 'from what doesn't exist?' And she left the table defiant, howbeit depressed.
'Don't you mind _her_,' I said consolingly; 'how can she know anything about it? Why, she can't even throw a stone properly!'
'Edward says they're all rot, too,' replied Charlotte doubtfully.