| Share page |
|
126 THE SHADOWS.
moody host, notwithstanding his hospitality, was :eft alone at the table in the great silent room. We lollowed the company up-stairs to the drawing-room, and thence to the nursery for snap-dragon ; but while they were busy with this most shadowy of games, nearly all the Shadows crept downstairs again to the dining-room, where the old man still sat, gnawing the bone of his own selfishness. They crowded into the room, and by using every kind of expansion—blowing themselves out like soap bubbles—they succeeded in heaping up the whole room with shade upon shade. They clustered thickest about the fire and the lamp, till at last they almost drowned them in hills of darkness.
"Before they had accomplished so much, the children, tired with fun and frolic, had been put to bed. But the little girl of hve years old, with whom we had been so pleased when first we |
||