'O I've got a plum-cake, and a feast let us make,
Come, school-fellows, come at my call;
I assure you 'tis nice, and we'll all have a slice,
Here's more than enough for us all.'
Jane Taylor.
'It is come! Felix, it is come!'
So cried, shouted, shrieked a chorus, as a street door was torn open to admit four boys, with their leathern straps of books over their shoulders. They set up a responsive yell of 'Jolly! Jolly!' which being caught up and re-echoed by at least five voices within, caused a considerable volume of sound in the narrow entry and narrower staircase, up which might be seen a sort of pyramid of children.
'Where is it?' asked the tallest of the four arrivals, as he soberly hung up his hat.
'Mamma has got it in the drawing-room, and Papa has been in ever since dinner,' was the universal cry from two fine complexioned, handsome girls, from a much smaller girl and boy, and from a creature rolling on the stairs, whose sex and speech seemed as yet uncertain.
'And where's Cherry?' was the further question; 'is she there too?'
'Yes, but—' as he laid his hand on the door—'don't open the letter there. Get Cherry, and we'll settle what to do with it.'
'O Felix, I've a stunning notion!'