The Marriage Mart Read Online Free

long enough to nod agreement with her husband. Her spectacles were balanced on the end of her nose, giving her an owlish look.
    “I wish I could stretch my legs a bit,” Lydia’s husband, Sedgwick, said from where he stood staring into the fire. He was tall and athletic of build. “I feel as though I’ve been living in a box for days on end.”
    “Yes, we could all do with a little exercise,” Lydia agreed.
    “Can’t exactly ride to the hounds now,” Randolph put in gloomily.
    “Oh yes we could,” Mary said slowly as a thought occurred to her. Her voice started to rise as she began to fill with enthusiasm at her own idea. “You can do anything inside you can do outside, if only you change things ’round a bit.”
    “Never say you mean to bring horses in on the Aubusson rugs?” Elsbeth cried, pushing her spectacles up her nose with one finger.
    “Yes, that’s quite what I mean, only the horses I am thinking of must be only a few inches high.”
    The siblings and spouses looked at one another, and despite their initial resistance, a house party was born.
    They received a quick response of enthusiastic acceptance from nearly every soul who was invited, and within two days, in which they scurried to carry out preparations, the event was upon them.
    It was declared by a crookedly inked banner just inside the door that it was to be “a Hounds Day.” As the guests entered and surrendered their rain-soaked outer garments, they were bid to draw slips of numbered paper from a bowl, thereby forming miscellaneous groups of “riders” by virtue of matching numbers. Mary led them into the bigger salon at the back of the house, where she delivered her instructions.
    “It’s all very simple. I shall play the part of the hounds by reading the first clue. After that, it is up to you to ‘follow the hounds’, or in other words to locate the item you have been instructed to find. Recall your group’s number, stay together and work as a team, and do not follow the clues that were numbered and intended for other groups. If you do, you forfeit the hunt. When you find each of your intended items, bring them back to this room, and our good man Pendleton will mark it here.” She pointed up at the large graph, less crooked than the banner pinned to the wall, in front of which stood their butler, Pendleton. The graph was lined with a number of “lanes,” one for each group of hunters, at the start of which posed a cut out drawing of a horse.
    “I say,” called one of the guests in group number five, “Our nag there isn’t a very handsome fellow, is he?”
    Everyone laughed, and despite their prompting Mary said she must refuse to tell who the artist had been, though she did say, “He would not care to have his artistry laughed upon.” Whereupon all eyes turned to Randolph, for he had flushed in a telltale manner. He flushed even more and laughed at the same time, receiving the slaps upon his back and loud guffaws with good grace. “Fellow’s name is Eye of the Beholder,” he said with a grin.
    That was met with more laughter until Mary went on. “There will be prizes for first, second, and third place for ‘bagging the fox’, that is, reaching the end of the graph. A luncheon for all will follow the end of the game.”
    When those in the gathering were done murmuring their appreciation, she produced a slip of paper, from which she read:
    “ Travel not to the out of doors,
    For no prizes will then be yours.
    Seek now inside to find your clues,
    The first: Each hour I pay my dues. ”
    She then raised a horn to her lips for a brief and discordant blast, and with a shout of ‘Tally-Ho!’ the room broke into pandemonium. Some fled the room at once, others stood about discussing the meaning of the clue, which most easily agreed must be some kind of clock, and still others moved off stealthfully, as though they truly would startle a fox from some hidden place.
    Mary and her family came together except for her