It was funny, but though we’d never wanted people to do anything before but leave us alone, we found that we didn’t a bit like it always being Lionel and his curls that every one made such a fuss over. I don’t mean, of course, that Mother was any different, but she was so busy that she couldn’t attend to us much, for there was a dinner party and lots of other things to amuse Cousin Florence, and cook’s temper is always awful. Why, some evenings she couldn’t even come to say good-night to us and tuck us up, (I mean Mother, not cook), and that makes everything seem horrid. It wasn’t only Lionel that was such a trial, but Cousin Florence was always there too. She said she liked to watch us play, as if we could do anything with a grown-up person looking on, and just at that time we were in the middle of a most exciting game, where Humphrey was my grandfather and very strict and nearly starved and beat me to death. One day we couldn’t stand it any longer, so Humph and I ran off and left Cousin Florence and Lionel. We hid all the afternoon in the cave we’ve discovered, where you have to sit quite doubled up because it’s so small and secret, and it was lovely. But Mother made us promise not to do it again. She said Bayard wouldn’t have done it nor any one like that, because they considered the laws of hospitality to be most sacred, and that they showed politeness to a visitor even if he’d insulted them. So after that we always played with Lionel, but underneath Humph and I had another game all the time, and that helped us. We pretended that we were Knights of the Round Table, and that Lionel was the Unwelcome Guest, who had to be courteously entreated; we said “please” and “thank you” to him in almost every sentence. Really that was the only game at which Lionel was much good, for he didn’t seem to understand pretending at all, so he always had to act a passing gentleman or some silly thing of that sort. He couldn’t even be a regiment of soldiers properly.