“Let’s show them the game we tried the other night,” said Dorothy to her brother as they all returned to the music-room.

“Oh, that’s too hard for them,” answered Frank with affected superiority.  “They couldn’t guess anything so difficult as that.”

“Try it and see,” clamored two or three voices.

So Frank with one finger drew a large circle in the air, and with elaborate gestures made two points for the eyes and a line each for nose and mouth.  As he did so he recited solemnly: 

“The moon is large and full and round; Two eyes, a nose and mouth.”

“Now see if you can do it just as I did,” he said to Jack, who sat next him.

Jack tried, imitating as nearly as he could remember all of Frank’s peculiar movements of hand and arm, but as he finished Dorothy and Frank shouted, “No; not right.”

“Do it again, Frank,” begged Charlotte, watching him sharply.

Frank did it again, and this time with even more elaboration of gesture.  The eyes were poked in with great firmness, the nose in its airy curves looked like no possible human feature, and the mouth was so decidedly turned up at the comers that one might have fancied it was laughing at them.

Charlotte thought she knew; she had noticed a peculiar curve in Frank’s little finger, and the sudden way in which he had dropped his hand both times.  So she tried her fate with great courage, only to fail as Jack had done.

“You do it, Dorothy,” said Betty.

Dorothy did it, but her method was so different from Frank’s that she gave them no discoverable clue.  The features she made were all small and precise, and she put in a few meaningless flourishes which puzzled them more than ever.

Then Arthur, who had been watching quietly, said the little speech and made the drawing in a way quite different from either Frank or Dorothy, and to the surprise of all the two wise ones admitted him at once into their fellowship.

“All right, old fellow,” laughed Frank.  “Now there are three of us who know.”

At last Betty, with a gurgle of triumph, did it in the required way.  Then Phil saw the point, and Alice discovered it almost at the same time.  Finally there was a circle of waving arms, and a chorus of voices announcing that: 

“The moon is large and full and round; Two eyes, a nose and mouth.”

Only Ruth failed to guess the secret, and, though she waved with the others and tried her best to imitate all the various methods at once, she still failed every time.

“Your arm’s in my way, Ruth,” said Joe, who happened to be sitting on her right.

“I’ll do it with the other, then,” responded Ruth good-naturedly.  To her surprise this attempt was greeted with a shout of, “That’s right,” and then every one laughed at her dazed expression.

“Why, I’ve done it that way dozens of times,” she protested.

“No, you haven’t,” came in a laughing chorus.  “Look at us once more.”