On this inducement or another, the visitors remained throughout a strange, Passover meal, in the course of which Iris leapt up and wrote and destroyed three successive telegrams alternately telling Aunt Anne that she was or was not expected on the following day, and Mr. Garrett discoursed further on the marriage laws of England, regarded by him with the extreme of disfavour, and the children took advantage of their father's usual leniency and their aunt's roving attention, to dispose of immense quantities of cake previously smeared with jam.
Edna, remembering the quasi-maternal rôle adopted by herself towards Ruthie, fixed a look of grave surprise upon the child from the other side of the table.
Ruthie ate on.
Lady Rossiter deepened the look and sought to convey its full inner meaning by dropping a pained glance at the jam-laden slab in Ruthie's hand and then raising her eyebrows and slightly contracting the corners of her mouth.
These signals being stolidly disregarded, there only remained to say, in very gentle accents:
"Are you always allowed cake and jam together, dear?"
"Always," said Ruthie, with a face of brass, and in her voice an intensity of assurance that conveyed with certainty, to anyone as well conversant as was Lady Rossiter with the extremely low standard of truth prevailing in the Easter nursery establishment, that she was lying.
Edna turned her gaze upon Ambrose.
His face already bore the peculiarly glazed and pallid look that characterises over-eating, but on meeting Lady Rossiter's eye he made a mighty effort to cram his remaining cake into an already bulging cheek.
"You'll choke, Peekaboo," warned Ruthie, with only too much reason.