But, after all, Aunt Jane proved to have more sympathy with ‘messes’ than any of the others.  She knew very well that the children would be far less troublesome if they had a place to themselves, and she said, ’Well, Val, you shall have the boxroom in the attics.  And mind, you must keep all your goods there, both of you.  If I find them about the house, I shall—–­’

‘Oh, what, Aunt Jane?’

‘Confiscate them,’ was the reply, in a very awful voice, which impressed Fergus the more because he did not understand the word.

‘You need not look so much alarmed, Fergus,’ said Gillian; ’you are not at all the likely one to transgress.’

‘No,’ said Valetta gravely.  ’Fergus is what Lois calls a regular old battledore.’

‘I won’t be called names,’ exclaimed Fergus.

’Well, Lois said so—–­when you were so cross because the poker had got on the same side as the tongs!  She said she never saw such an old battledore, and you know how all the others took it up.’

‘Shuttlecock yourself then!’ angrily responded Fergus, while both aunt and sister were laughing too much to interfere.

‘I shall call you a little Uncle Maurice instead,’ said Aunt Jane.  ’How things come round!  Perhaps you would not believe, Gill, that Aunt Ada was once in a scrape, when she was our Mrs. Malaprop, for applying that same epithet on hearsay to Maurice.’

This laugh made Gillian feel more at home with her aunt, and they went up happily together for the introduction to the lumber-room, not a very spacious place, and with a window leading out to the leads.  Aunt Jane proceeded to put the children on their word of honour not to attempt to make an exit thereby, which Gillian thought unnecessary, since this pair were not enterprising.

The evening went off happily.  Aunt Jane produced one of the old games which had been played at the elder Beechcroft, and had a certain historic character in the eyes of the young people.  It was one of those variations of the Game of the Goose that were once held to be improving, and their mother had often told them how the family had agreed to prove whether honesty is really the best policy, and how it had been agreed that all should cheat as desperately as possible, except ‘honest Phyl,’ who couldn’t; and how, by some extraordinary combination, good for their morals, she actually was the winner.  It was immensely interesting to see the identical much-worn sheet of dilapidated pictures with the padlock, almost close to the goal, sending the counter back almost to the beginning in search of the key.  Still more interesting was the imitation, “in very wonderful drawing, devised by mamma, of the career of a true knight—–­ from pagedom upwards—–­in pale watery Prussian-blue armour, a crimson scarf, vermilion plume, gamboge spurs, and very peculiar arms and legs.  But, as Valetta observed, it must have been much more interesting to draw such things as that than stupid freehand lines and twists with no sense at all in them.