The
women held a tower, and the men attacked it with roses and flowers
generally."
"Why, is this a speech?" Miss Macroyd interrupted.
"A speech from the throne, yes," Bushwick solemnly corrected her. "And
she's got it written down, like a queen--haven't you, Mrs. Westangle?"
"Yes, I thought it would be more respectful."
"She coming out," Bushwick said to Verrian across the table.
"And if I got mixed up I could go back and straighten it," the hostess
declared, with a good--humored candor that took the general fancy, "and
you could understand without so much explaining. We haven't got flowers
enough at this season," she went on, looking down again at the paper
beside her plate, "but we happen to have plenty of snowballs, and the
notion is to have the women occupy a snow tower and the men attack them
with snowballs."
"Why," Bushwick said, "this is the snow-fort business of our boyhood!
Let's go out and fortify the ladies at once." He appealed to Verrian and
made a feint of pushing his chair back. "May we use water-soaked
snowballs, or must they all be soft and harmless?" he asked of Mrs.
Westangle, who was now the centre of a storm of applause and question
from the whole table.
She kept her head and referred again to her paper. "The missiles of the
assailants are to be very soft snowballs, hardly more than mere clots, so
that nobody can be hurt in the assault, but the defenders may repel the
assailants with harder snowballs.
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