XII.
At breakfast, where the guests were reasonably punctual, they were all
able to observe, in the rapid succession in which they descended from
their rooms, that it had stopped snowing and the sun was shining
brilliantly.
"There isn't enough for sleighing," Mrs. Westangle proclaimed from the
head of the table in her high twitter, "and there isn't any coasting here
in this flat country for miles."
"Then what are we going to do with it?" one of the young ladies
humorously pouted.
"That's what I was going to suggest," Mrs. Westangle replied. She
pronounced it 'sujjest', but no one felt that it mattered. "And, of
course," she continued, "you needn't any of you do it if you don't like."
"We'll all do it, Mrs. Westangle," Bushwick said. "We are unanimous in
that."
"Perhaps you'll think it rather funny--odd," she said.
"The odder the better, I think," Verrian ventured, and another man
declared that nothing Mrs. Westangle would do was odd, though everything
was original.
"Well, there is such a thing as being too original," she returned. Then
she turned her head aside and looked down at something beside her plate
and said, without lifting her eyes, "You know that in the Middle Ages
there used to be flower-fights among the young nobility in Italy.
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