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The latest to follow him was Verrian, who, strangely alert, and as far from drowsiness as he had ever known himself, was yet more roused by realizing that Mrs. Westangle was not letting his hand go at once, but, unless it was mere absent-mindedness, was conveying through it the wish to keep him.
Westangle, whose widespread consciousness his happiness in accepting did not immediately reach; and in the very large house party, which he duly joined under her roof, he was aware of losing distinctiveness almost to the point of losing identity.
As it was, she sent for me to her room the next morning, and I found Miss Shirley alone there. She said Mrs. Westangle would be down in a moment." Now, indeed, Mrs. Verrian could not govern herself from saying, "I don't like it, Philip." "I knew you wouldn't. It was what I said to myself at the time. You were so present with me that I seemed to have you there chaperoning the interview."
This was how far Miss Shirley was culpable in the fraud she was letting Mrs. Westangle practise on her innocent guests. It was a distasteful question, and he did not find it much more agreeable when it subdivided itself into the question of necessity on her part, and of a not very clearly realized situation on Mrs. Westangle's.
Merriam," and Verrian was aware of being vexed at her failure to catch his name; the name of Verrian ought to have been unmistakable. "The young lady in the office says there won't be another, and I'm expected promptly." She added, with a little tremor of the lip, "I don't understand why Mrs. Westangle " But then she stopped.
"Then what are we going to do with it?" one of the young ladies humorously pouted. "That's what I was going to suggest," Mrs. Westangle replied. She pronounced it 'sujjest', but no one felt that it mattered. "And, of course," she continued, "you needn't any of you do it if you don't like." "We'll all do it, Mrs. Westangle," Bushwick said. "We are unanimous in that."
"What is all our athletic training to go for if you do?" Mrs. Westangle read on: "The terms of capitulation can be arranged on the ground, whether the castle is carried or the assailing party are made prisoners by its defenders." "Hopeless captivity in either case!" Bushwick lamented. "Isn't it rather academic?" Miss Macroyd asked of Verrian, in a low voice. "I'm afraid, rather," he owned.
"But why are you so serious?" she pursued. "Am I serious?" he retorted, with a trace of exasperation; and she laughed. Their parley was quite lost in the clamor which raged up and down the table till Mrs. Westangle ended it by saying, "There's no obligation on any one to take part in the hostilities. There won't be any conscription; it's a free fight that will be open to everybody."
The battle won't begin till eleven o'clock." She rose, and the clamor rose again with her, and her guests crushed about her, demanding to be allowed at least to go and look at the castle immediately. One of the men's voices asked, "May I be one of the defenders, Mrs. Westangle? I want to be on the winning side, sure." "Oh, is this going to be a circus chariot-race?" another lamented.
Westangle herself, whom they praised beyond any articulate expression, for thinking up such a delightful thing. They wondered how she could ever have thought of it such a simple thing too; and they were sure that when people heard of it they would all be wanting to have snow battles. Mrs. Westangle took her praises as passively, if not as modestly, as Verrian received his.
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