"That wasn't entirely the pact," said Peachy, driving in her tacks with firm hammer. "We offered to 'mother' them, and then forgot all about them. No wonder they think us frauds. What's to be done about it?"
"Get some more cakes somehow and ask them all to a party," suggested Irene enthusiastically. "We have been pigs! I promised Désirée to paint something in her album, and the book's been in my drawer for weeks, and I've never touched it."
"How are we going to get the cakes?"
"Wheedle Antonio again, I suppose. We needn't have any ourselves. If there are two slices apiece for the kids, it will do. We must keep some of our biscuits from lunch so that we can seem to be eating something ourselves. Peachy, you can coax him."
"You always leave it to me. Antonio isn't so easy to manage. Sometimes he's an absolute Pharisee, and won't buy me so much as a single bit of candy. I'll do what I can. Those poor kids shall have a treat if it costs me my last dollar. We owe them something decent."
Antonio, whose lapses from duty were only occasional, and who had been reprimanded lately by Miss Rodgers, who suspected his delinquencies, proved deaf on this occasion to Peachy's blandishments. He protested, with quite aggravating virtue, that it was as much as his place was worth to smuggle even a solitary cream-cake, and that for the future he must no more be the conveyor of contraband sweet stuff.
"Stumped in that quarter," mourned Peachy. "But I'm not going to let this beat me. I've been cultivating a friendship with the cook! Don't laugh! I thought it might come in useful some day. I gave her my blue butterfly brooch (I had two of them!), and I took a snap-shot of her in her Sunday clothes, and she was immensely pleased and flattered. I haven't developed it yet, by the by, but I will, and print her two copies and mount them. If that doesn't melt her heart into sparing me a little butter and sugar it ought to. We can square it this way: none of us ten must eat any butter or sugar at breakfast or tea to-morrow, then we'll have a real right to have it given us afterwards. Don't pull faces! You can have marmalade or jam. What sybarites you are!"
"Right-o," agreed the Camellia Buds, sorrowfully accepting the sacrifice.
"But couldn't the juniors contribute some butter, too?" added Sheila.
"It might be noticed if too many went without. Besides, it's the hostesses who ought to provide the party, not the guests."