Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/256

236 est notion of what was expected of them. Mrs. Moulton, acting as hostess, or a reception committee of one, supplemented the boys who gave out pads and pencils. She explained that the players were expected to set down the names of the characters whom, later on, they would meet wandering in the garden, each name opposite the number on the pad corresponding to the number which would be conspicuously worn by the actor; that they had the privilege of asking questions from the actors, intended to draw forth clues to their impersonations, questions which the actors were obliged, by the rules of the game, to answer, but only if they were capable of being answered indirectly. For instance, if one met a girl with a crook one would not be permitted to say point blank: “Are you little Bo-peep?” compelling the bereft sheperdess to answer: “Yes.”

As the darkness dropped down over the garden, warm, fragrant, heavy with August dew, it absorbed and gave back the delicious blended odours from the garden: cedar and juniper and box, white lilies, alyssum, mignonette, monthly roses and hardy tea roses, heliotrope, sweet peas, pungent marigolds, phlox, nasturtiums, and many more living jars of fragrance, uncovered