"Oh, she must have it at once!" Chris said. "It has money in it. I can hear it jingle. You always give up money at once. Besides, she may be wanting to use it. You go on back to Mums and give her the strawberries, and tell her all about it."
Noel brightened up. To give his mother anything was always a treat, and he dearly liked telling her of any adventure that befell him.
So the little boys parted, and Noel reached home at last. His mother met him at the door.
"Why, my darling, how warm you are!"
"And I'm tarred and firsty," said Noel, "and I'm raining all over me—"
"Where are the others? Come into the dining-room and I will get you a glass of lemonade."
"Here are the strawberries, such tinies! But they taste very nice, Mums. Dinah and Chris have both gone off about a lady who's at Lady Alice's—"
Then he poured into his mother's ears the events of the afternoon. When he had drunk the lemonade and had had his hands and face washed, and was seated in his mother's lap in her boudoir, he began to feel better.
And then he suddenly put his arms round his mother's neck and hugged her.
"I do feel sorry for the poor little boys who can't get on their mothers' laps," he said.