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What Shall We Do Now? 7
get safely into each other's corner before the cat can. Puss's aim is to find a corner unprotected. If she does so, the player who has just left it, or the player who was hoping to be in it, becomes puss, according to whether or not they have crossed on their journey.
The players sit in a circle on the floor, with their knees a little gathered up. One stands in the middle with a slipper, and the game is begun by the handing by this one of the slipper to a player in the circle, with the remark—
Cobbler, cobbler, mend my shoe, Get it done by half-past two,
and then retiring from the circle for a few moments. The player to whom it was handed at once passes it on, so that when the owner of the slipper returns and demands her property again it cannot be found. With the hunt that then sets in the fun begins ; the object of every player in the circle being to keep the player in the middle from seeing the slipper, from getting hold of it, or from knowing where it is, as it rapidly travels under the knees of the players here and there in the circle. Now and then, if the seeker is badly mystified, the slipper may be tossed across the circle. The player in whose possession it is when at last secured changes place with the one in the middle. Other handy things will do quite as well as a slipper, but something fairly large should be chosen, or discovery may take too long ; and it ought to be soft in texture, or there may be bruises.
This is partly a trick. A player who does not know the game is put in the middle of the ring, round which a whistle is moving in the way that the slipper moves in " Hunt the Slipper." The object of the player in the middle is to discover the person who blew the whistle last. Meanwhile some one skilfully fixes another whistle on a string to the player's back, and that is the |
Hunt the
slipper. |
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The whistle |
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