A SURPRISE PARTY.
"Five-and-thirty wounded Tommies coming to tea and one of them coming to his death, but he doesn't know it," moaned Emily, and waved a knife round her head.
I saw what had happened. All this bun-baking and cake-making had been too much for my poor wife. She had been living in the oven for a week.
"You're overdone. Lie down and try to get a little nap before they come," I said soothingly. "Everything's ready."
"Will he die without a sound, or will he gurgle?" said Emily, and brought the knife within an inch of my nose.
"No one is going to die at our tea-party, dear," I said, and ducked.
"Not after swallowing that?" shrieked Emily, and lunged at me with the knife again.
I got it firmly by the handle this time, and I recognised Emily's special cake-knife, an instrument wrought to perfection by long years of service, sharp as a razor down both sides, with a flexible tip that slithered round a basin and scooped up the last morsels of candied-peel.
But the flexible tip was gone. I understood Emily's distraught condition. You can replace a diamond tiara; money won't buy a twenty-year-old cake-knife.
"Try and bear it, dear," I said.
Emily pointed to the table weighed down with Madeiras and rocks and almonds and sultanas and gingers. "It's inside one of them," she said.
For the moment I failed to grasp her meaning. She explained. "I've made six dozen. The knife was all right when I started; a little bent, nothing more. It was when I was mixing the last that I noticed the tip was missing."
It was a difficult position. There was no time to submit the cakes to the X-rays; the advance party was streaming through the gate.
"Dear fellows! I wonder which one it will be," said Emily, and clung round my neck.
I put her on one side. "I'll manage it; leave it to me," I said, and went forward and welcomed our guests. My mind was working clearly and rapidly, as it always does in a crisis. When I had got them seated round the tea-table, "My dear friends," I said, "this isn't a Christmas party, but my wife couldn't help indulging in a little Christmas fun. She's just whispered to me that she's put a surprise in one of the cakes. I know her. It won't be an ordinary sort of surprise. I should advise you all to keep a sharp look-out. There's a pound" (it was worth a pound to save a hero's throat from being cut) "for the man who finds anything in his cake which hasn't any business to be there."
Within five minutes two pebbles, a tin-tack, a chunk of wood and a black-beetle were on the tablecloth....
"Do you know that flutter's cost me five pounds, and there wasn't a sign of your infernal knife after all?" I said to Emily when they'd gone.
"I've just found it under the kitchen table," said Emily. "I am thankful."
"This company's year ended on the 40th June, and a good distribution is looked for by the market."—Journal of Commerce.
With such help from the calendar any company should do well.