"But," urged Peggy, "it's so simple. I'll rehearse you. You'd find it awfully amusing." "I do not think so," he replied. "Then will you be Bill Sykes, with Diogenes and a revolver?--and I'll be Nancy. You would only have to murder me. If you don't like the lover parts you'd enjoy that." There was a gleam in the grey eyes that John Musgrave was unable to account for; he saw nothing funny in such a sordid scene. "I do not like that idea any better," he said. Then he made a sudden appeal to her generosity, his air slightly apologetic, almost, it occurred to Peggy, humble. "Please leave me out of it," he begged. "I'm a very prosy person. These things are better suited to the younger generation. Many men will enjoy filling these parts with you; I shall enjoy looking on." Peggy gave in. She had not expected Mr Musgrave to agree to her proposes; she had, indeed, been guilty of teasing him. But she endeavoured with some success to make him believe in her acute disappointment, so that when he left her it was with a sense of his own ungraciousness, and a desire to make amends in any way possible for having been disobliging, if not actually discourteous, to a young lady who was, he could not but admit, both amiable and charming. The difficulty was how to make amends. After considering the matter seriously and developing and rejecting many ideas, he decided that he would be forced to remain indebted until the opportunity presented itself for discharging the obligation. He really felt extremely and quite unnecessarily grateful to Miss Annersley. There was, on the face of it, no obligation to discharge. Mr Musgrave was advancing a little way along the road of complexities that go to the making of human emotions. He had begun by feeling an interest in this young woman. Interest is a comprehensive term embodying many sentiments and capable of unforeseen developments. Peggy was undoubtedly a dangerously pretty person to become an object of interest to a middle-aged bachelor. If Mr Musgrave thought Peggy pretty--and he did consider her pretty--on ordinary occasions, he found her amazingly lovely tricked out in stage attire, when, at the conclusion of the Christmas Eve dinner, he repaired with the other guests to the temporary theatre and viewed a succession of brilliantly arranged tableaux which, despite the fact that they were exceedingly well done and perfectly staged, he mentally pronounced a stupid form of entertainment for intelligent adults. Mummery of any kind appealed to him as undignified. Never in all his forty years had he felt the slightest temptation to play the fool; it always surprised him to see other people doing it. And this histrionic grouping was but playing the fool in serious fashion; it was a game of vanity better suited to children. But the pictures were pretty. He admitted that. Most of the guests appeared to enjoy them.