Bores are of two kinds—active and passive. The active are the worse, and in that category Miss Kittenish must be placed, her special aggravation being that she is so playful, and has a passion for parlour-games—a very virulent form of boredom to practise upon the amiable person. Now, be it remembered that Miss Kittenish is a spinster of a very uncertain age—so uncertain, in fact, that there is no telling what childish prank she may not be up to. But that which may be all very well when directing the rollicking festivities of a school-treat is apt to be aggressively out of place in an assembly of grown-up and presumably reasonable persons. Yet that is just what Miss Kittenish is unable to realise. The fascination of the round game seems to have stunted her mental growth, and all her friends suffer in consequence. Heaven knows, no one is more amenable than I to frivolity of any kind; no one is readier to make a fool of himself at the proper season, and under the necessary inspiration. And as for playing with children, no game is too primitive for me, nothing that they can expect me to do is too idiotic, nothing too undignified. For the nonce I will set a fool’s cap upon my dignity, and laugh at it. I will sing, “This is the way we wash our clothes,” and act the attendant “business,” as they call it in stage-parlance, till I go perfectly hoarse in my throat. I will “hunt the slipper,” or play “puss in the corner,” and roll and romp on the floor with my little friends, and enjoy it as much as any of them. Let me loose among their toys, and witness my enthusiasm. Give me tops to spin, clockwork engines to set running, tin soldiers to shoot down with spring cannons, or a box of bricks to work my architectural fancy withal, and you shall see a transformation to which fairy lore alone can supply a parallel—you shall see thirty years fly away and leave me a child of six. But Miss Kittenish is so playful that she is entirely unable to discriminate between the amusements of the very juvenile and the adult; and this is painfully forced upon one whenever one is weak enough to accept an invitation to a social gathering at the Kittenishes’, who, I may add, live in the suburbs. This I do periodically, because they are such old family friends—they are, indeed, a sort of heirloom from the last generation, which has to be kept up. It would sometimes be curious to trace the origin of old family friends, from the cumbersome heirloom point of view.