--The old gentleman saw too, that his
favourite, who was under such obligation to him for loving her so much,
loved his son better than him; and this made him so jealous, that he
soon overshadowed the whole table with his morose looks and short
answers. That kind of shadowing is very different from ours; and the
Christmas dessert grew so gloomy that we Shadows could not bear it, and
were delighted when the ladies rose to go to the drawing-room. The
gentlemen would not stay behind the ladies, even for the sake of the
well-known wine. So the moddy host, notwithstanding his hospitality,
was left alone at the table, in the great silent room. We followed the
company upstairs to the drawing-room, and thence to the nursery for
snap-dragon. While they were busy with this most shadowy of games,
nearly all the Shadows crept down stairs again to the dining-room, where
the old man still sat, gnawing the bone of his own selfishness. They
crowded into the room, and by using every kind of expansion--blowing
themselves out like soap-bubbles, they succeeded in heaping up the whole
room with shade upon shade. They clustered thickest about the fire and
the lamp, till at last they almost drowned them in hills of darkness.
"'Before they had accomplished so much, the children, tired with fun and
frolic, were put to bed. But the little girl of five years old, with
whom we had been so pleased when first we arrived, could not go to
sleep.
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