d, for I was never more amused in
my life."

"And you will be prepared to endure the wine and sweet cake when they
come."

"Prepared to endure anything, and go through everything. We shall be
allowed candles now, I suppose."

"Oh, no, by no means. Snap-dragon by candlelight! who ever heard
of such a thing? It would wash all the dragon out of it, and leave
nothing but the snap. It is a necessity of the game that it should be
played in the dark,--or rather by its own lurid light."

"Oh, there is a lurid light; is there?"

"You shall see;" and then she turned away to make her preparations.

To the game of snap-dragon, as played at Noningsby, a ghost was
always necessary, and aunt Madeline had played the ghost ever since
she had been an aunt, and there had been any necessity for such a
part. But in previous years the spectators had been fewer in number
and more closely connected with the family. "I think we must drop the
ghost on this occasion," she said, coming up to her brother.

"You'll disgust them all dreadfully if you do," said he. "The young
Sebrights have come specially to see the ghost."

"Well, you can do ghost for them."

"I! no; I can't act a ghost. Miss Furnival, you'd make a lovely
ghost."

"I shall be most happy to be useful," said Sophia.

"Oh, aunt Mad, you must be ghost," said Marian, following her.

"You foolish little thing, you; we are going to have a beautiful
ghost--a divine ghost," said uncle Gus.

"But we want Madeline to be the ghost," said a big Miss Sebright, ten
or eleven years old.

"She's always ghost," said Marian.

"To be sure; it will be much better," said Miss Furnival. "I only
offered my poor services hoping to be useful. No Banquo that ever
lived could leave a worse ghost behind him than I should prove."

It ended in there being two ghosts. It had become quite impossible
to rob Miss Furnival of her promised part, and Madeline could not
refuse to solve the difficulty in this way without making more of the
matter than it deserved. The idea of two ghosts was delightful to
the children, more especially as it entailed two large dishes full
of raisins, and two blue fires blazing up from burnt brandy. So the
girls went out, not without proffered assistance from the gentlemen,
and after a painfully long interval of some fifteen or twenty
minutes,--for Miss Furnival's back hair would not come down and
adjust itself into ghostlike lengths with as much readiness as that
of her