‘You impatient monsters! You haven’t heard me out, and you don’t deserve it.’
‘Oh, mamma, I beg your pardon!’ ‘Oh, mamma, please!’ ‘Oh, mamma, pray!’ cried the most impatient howlers, dancing round her.
‘What I was about to observe, before the interruption by the honourable members, was, that we might perhaps ask Aunt Jane and Aunt Ada to receive at luncheon a party of caterers for this same tree.’
‘Oh! oh! oh!’ ‘How delicious!’ ‘Hooray!’ ‘That’s what I call jolly fun!’
‘And, mamma,’ added Gillian, ‘perhaps we might let Miss Hacket join. I know she wants to get up something for a G.F.S. class; but mamma was attending to Primrose, and the brothers burst in.
‘There goes Gill, spoiling it all!’ exclaimed Wilfred.
‘That’s always the way,’ said Jasper. ‘Girls must puzzle everything up with some philanthropic Great Fuss Society dodge.’
‘I am sure, Jasper,’ said Gillian, ‘I don’t see why it should spoil anything to make other people happy. I thought we were told to make feasts not only for our own friends—’
‘Gill’s getting just like old Miss Hacket,’ said Wilfred.
‘Or sweet Constance,’ put in Jasper. ‘She’ll be writing poems next.’