half-way between the front door and the staircase, to mark the
line of the footlights.

How even such a banquet of bosh was got ready in the time remained
a riddle. But they went at it with that mixture of recklessness and
industry that lives when youth is in a house; and youth was in that
house that night, though not all may have isolated the two faces and
hearts from which it flamed. As always happens, the invention grew
wilder and wilder through the very tameness of the bourgeois conventions
from which it had to create. The columbine looked charming in an
outstanding skirt that strangely resembled the large lamp-shade in the
drawing-room. The clown and pantaloon made themselves white with flour
from the cook, and red with rouge from some other domestic, who remained
(like all true Christian benefactors) anonymous. The harlequin, already
clad in silver paper out of cigar boxes, was, with difficulty, prevented
from smashing the old Victorian lustre chandeliers, that he might cover
himself with resplendent crystals. In fact he would certainly have done
so, had not Ruby unearthed some old pantomime paste jewels she had worn
at a fancy dress party as the Queen of Diamonds. Indeed, her uncle,
James Blount, was getting almost out of hand in his excitement; he was
like a schoolboy. He put a paper donkey's head unexpectedly on Father
Brown, who bore it patiently, and even found some private manner of
moving his ears. He even essayed to put the paper donkey's tail to the
coat-tails of Sir Leopold Fischer. This, however, was frowned down.
"Uncle is too absurd," cried Ruby to Crook, round whose shoulders she
had seriously placed a string of sausages. "Why is he so wild?"

"He is harlequin to your columbine," said Crook. "I am only the clown
who makes the old jokes."

"I wish you were the harlequin," she said, and left the string of
sausages swinging.

Father Brown, though he knew every detail done behind the scenes,
and had even evoked applause by his transformation of a pillow into a
pantomime baby, went round to the front and sat among the audience
with all the solemn expectation of a child at his first matinee. The
spectators were few, relations, one or two local friends, and the
servants; Sir Leopold sat in the front seat, his full and still
fur-collared figure largely obscuring the view of the little cleric
behind him; but it has never been settled by artistic authorities
whether the cleric lost much. The pantomime was