transition, was describing the play, as she had called
it, of the absentees. "She has hidden a book and he's trying to find
it."

"Hide and seek? Why, isn't it innocent, Mitch!" Mrs. Brook exclaimed.

Mitchy, speaking for the first time, faced her with extravagant gloom.
"Do you really think so?"

"That's HER innocence!" the Duchess laughed to him.

"And don't you suppose he has found it YET?" Mrs. Brook pursued
earnestly to Tishy. "Isn't it something we might ALL play at if--?" On
which however, abruptly checking herself, she changed her note. "Nanda
love, please go and invite them to join us."

Mitchy, at this, on his ottoman, wheeled straight round to the girl, who
looked at him before speaking. "I'll go if Mitchy tells me."

"But if he does fear," said her mother, "that there may be something in
it--?"

Mitchy jerked back to Mrs. Brook. "Well, you see, I don't want to give
way to my fear. Suppose there SHOULD be something! Let me not know."

She dealt with him tenderly. "I see. You couldn't--so soon--bear it."

"Ah but, savez-vous," the Duchess interposed with some majesty, "you're
horrid!"

"Let them alone," Mitchy continued. "We don't want at all events a
general romp."

"Oh I thought just that," said Mrs. Brook, "was what the Duchess wished
the door locked for! Perhaps moreover"--she returned to Tishy--"he
hasn't yet found the book."

"He can't," Tishy said with simplicity.

"But why in the world--?"

"You see she's sitting on it"--Tishy felt, it was plain, the
responsibility of explanation. "So that unless he pulls her off--"

"He can't compass his desperate end? Ah I hope he won't pull her off!"
Mrs. Brook wonderfully murmured. It was said in a manner that stirred
the circle, and unanimous laughter seemed already to have crowned her
invocation, lately uttered, to the social spirit. "But what in the
world," she pursued, "is the book selected for such a position? I hope
it's not a very big one."

"Oh aren't the books that are sat upon," Mr. Cashmore freely speculated,
"as a matter of course the bad ones?"

"Not a bit as a matter of course," Harold as freely replied to him.
"They sit, all round, nowadays--I mean in the papers and places--on some
awfully good stuff. Why I myself read books that I couldn't--upon my
honour I wouldn't risk it!--read out to you here."

"What a pity," his father dropped with the special shade of dryness
that was all Edward's own, "what a pity you haven't got one o