"I go to so many parties!" said Hazel. "I always have three or four a week, and we give a dance ourselves too. Last year I went to the Mayor's Children's Fancy Ball. I was dressed as a Dresden china shepherdess, with a flowered skirt and a laced bodice and paniers, and a big hat, and a crook in my hand. It's only to be a plain ball this Christmas. Then there are the pantomimes; we generally go to two and sometimes to the circus as well, and any concerts or entertainments that may happen to be on. Now, Connie, it's your turn to say."
"There are so many of us," began Connie, "Mother says it's like a party to see us all sitting round the table. We play games amongst ourselves, and get up acts and charades. We have a huge room at the top of the house, where we may make as much noise and mess as we like. Sometimes the boys give a magic-lantern show up there, or make shadow pictures. And Bertie has a lathe, and turns all kinds of jolly things in it out of pieces of wood; and he helps us to build boats; and we sail them across the reservoir; and we go long walks on the moors; and we've a little hut at the end of the garden, with a stove in it where we cook things. We make the most glorious toffee! I wouldn't change my holidays for anybody else's!"
"They do sound nice," said Nina. "I go about with my sisters. They're quite grown up, and they take me to pay calls. Then my brother's at home as well, and he and I have fun together. I'm asked to plenty of parties, but Mother is so terribly afraid of my catching cold that I miss quite half of them. I don't always go to the pantomime, because of draughts. I like the summer holidays best, when we stay at the seaside. Jessie, you haven't said yet."
"I don't know what to tell," said Jessie, who was not gifted with great powers of description.
"Oh, but you must say something! I don't suppose you spend the holidays in bed."
"Well, no!" said Jessie, laughing. "Though I did once, when I had scarlet fever. I go walks with my brother, and we help to decorate the church, and people ask us to tea. I think that's all."
"I still think mine are the nicest," said Hazel. "Linda, we want yours."
"We live quite in the country," said Linda. "The carol singers come on Christmas Eve, and we ask them in and give them hot coffee. There's a big pond, where we skate if it freezes hard enough, and once, when there was very deep snow, we had out our sledge. Sometimes we stay with Granny in London, and then we go to the pantomime and the circus, and have a lovely time. We've got a new puppy, and I want to teach him some tricks these holidays. Now, Sylvia, you're the last."
"I've nobody to do anything with," said Sylvia rather wistfully, almost forgetting, in listening to the glowing accounts of the others, how she had once said she did not wish for young companions. "Not at home at any rate; but of course there are parties, and we have people to tea. I just read and paint, and do things by myself."
The girls appeared to consider this must be very slow, and pitied Sylvia to such an extent that she was quite surprised.