"A very likely thing!" sneered Hugh John. "You heard me say 'Bags Hatteraick,' Toady Lion! Every one heard me--you can't go back on that. You know you can't!"
This was unanswerable. It was felt that to palter with such sacred formulas would be to renounce the most sacred obligations and to unsettle the very foundations of society.
Whereupon I hastened to keep his Majesty's peace by proposing a compromise.
"The girls surely don't want to play the villains' parts," I began.
"Oh, but just don't they!" ejaculated Maid Margaret, with the eyes of a child-saint momentarily disappointed of Paradise. "Why does a cat not eat butter for breakfast every morning? Because it jolly well can't get it."
"Well, at any rate," said I, severely, "girls oughtn't to _want_ to play the villains' parts."
"No," said Sweetheart, with still, concentrated irony, "they ought always to do just what boys tell them to, of course--never think of wanting anything that boys want, and always be thankful for boys' leavings! U-m-m! _I_ know!"
"You should wait till you hear what I meant to say, Sweetheart," I went on, with as much dignity as I could muster. "There are plenty of characters you will like to be, in every one of the books, but I think it would be fair always to draw lots for the first choice!"
"Yes--yes--oh, yes!" came the chorus, from three of the party. But Hugh John, strong in the indefeasible rights of man, only repeated, "_I_ said 'Bags Hatteraick!'"
"Well, then," I said, "for this time Hatteraick is yours, but for the future it will be fairer to draw lots for first choice."
"All right," growled Hugh John; "then I suppose I'll have to put up with a lot more heroes! Milksops, I call them!"
"Which book shall we have next?" said Sweetheart, who was beginning to be rather ashamed of her heat. "I don't believe that you could tell us _Rob Roy!_"
"Well, I can try," said I, modestly. For so it behooves a modern parent to behave in the presence of his children.
"_She_," said Hugh John, pointing directly at his sister, "she read nearly half the book aloud, and we never came to Rob at all. That's why she asks for _Rob Roy_."
"But there's all about Alan Breck in the preface--ripping, it is!" interpolated Sir Toady, who had been doing some original research, "tell us about him."