It
was damp and cold, and I shivered.
7
The next day Okehurst was full of people, and Mrs. Oke, to my amazement,
was doing the honours of it as if a house full of commonplace, noisy young
creatures, bent upon flirting and tennis, were her usual idea of felicity.
The afternoon of the third day--they had come for an electioneering ball,
and stayed three nights--the weather changed; it turned suddenly very cold
and began to pour. Every one was sent indoors, and there was a general
gloom suddenly over the company. Mrs. Oke seemed to have got sick of her
guests, and was listlessly lying back on a couch, paying not the slightest
attention to the chattering and piano-strumming in the room, when one of
the guests suddenly proposed that they should play charades. He was a
distant cousin of the Okes, a sort of fashionable artistic Bohemian,
swelled out to intolerable conceit by the amateur-actor vogue of a season.
"It would be lovely in this marvellous old place," he cried, "just to dress
up, and parade about, and feel as if we belonged to the past. I have heard
you have a marvellous collection of old costumes, more or less ever since
the days of Noah, somewhere, Cousin Bill.
Pages:
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71