soap."

A TOUCH OF REALISM

"I hope you've come full of suggestions for Christmas," said Lady Blonze
to her latest arrived guest; "the old-fashioned Christmas and the up-to-
date Christmas are both so played out. I want to have something really
original this year."

"I was staying with the Mathesons last month," said Blanche Boveal
eagerly, "and we had such a good idea. Every one in the house-party had
to be a character and behave consistently all the time, and at the end of
the visit one had to guess what every one's character was. The one who
was voted to have acted his or her character best got a prize."

"It sounds amusing," said Lady Blonze.

"I was St. Francis of Assisi," continued Blanche; "we hadn't got to keep
to our right sexes. I kept getting up in the middle of a meal, and
throwing out food to the birds; you see, the chief thing that one
remembers of St. Francis is that he was fond of the birds. Every one was
so stupid about it, and thought that I was the old man who feeds the
sparrows in the Tuileries Gardens. Then Colonel Pentley was the Jolly
Miller on the banks of Dee."

"How on earth did he do that?" asked Bertie van Tahn.

"'He laughed and sang from morn till night,'" explained Blanche.

"How dreadful for the rest of you," said Bertie; "and anyway he wasn't on
the banks of Dee."

"One had to imagine that," said Blanche.

"If you could imagine all that you might as well imagine cattle on the
further bank and keep on calling them home, Mary-fashion, across the
sands of Dee. Or you might change the river to the Yarrow and imagine it
was on the top of you, and say you were Willie, or whoever it was,
drowned in Yarrow."

"Of course it's easy to make fun of it," said Blanche sharply, "but it
was extremely interesting and amusing. The prize was rather a fiasco,
though. You see, Millie Matheson said her character was Lady Bountiful,
and as she was our hostess of course we all had to vote that she had
carried out her character better than anyone. Otherwise I ought to have
got the prize."

"It's quite an idea for a Christmas party," said Lady Blonze; "we must
certainly do it here."

Sir Nicholas was not so enthusiastic. "Are you quite sure, my dear, that
you're wise in doing this thing?" he said to his wife when they were
alone together. "It might do very well at the Mathesons, where they had
rather a staid, elderly house-party, but here it will be a different
matter. There