Everybody looked at everybody else, and the glances finally grew indignant.
"There isn't any answer."
"Give it up?"
"Yes," cried the voices in unison.
"Why, one—if the basket is big enough."
"There couldn't be a basket made as large as that. You might as well ask how many drops of water there are in the sea, and then say only one because they all run together."
The girls applauded that, and, before anyone had thought of another, Miranda,—tall, black, imposing, with a gay turban wound round her head,—announced:
"De little misses were all disquested to walk out to de Christmas supper."
Grandmamma did not know how to leave her guests, and she was in the middle of a game of loo, but she had promised to sit at the head of the table, so Mrs. Chapman took her place. No one felt troubled because there were no boys at the party: the only boy of the house had gone out skating with some other boys.
It was quite a royal feast. There were thin bread and butter, dainty biscuits not much larger than the penny of that day, cold turkey and cold ham, and cake of every kind, it would seem, ranged around the iced Christmas cake that was surmounted by a wreath of some odd golden flowers that people dried and kept all winter for ornamental purposes.