Aunt Edith had not come home, but she came as they were washing their hands and faces for supper. She brought with her presents for Edred’s birthday—nicer presents, and more of them, than he had had for three years.
She bought him a box of wonderfully varied chocolate and a box of tools, a very beautiful bat and a cricket-ball and a set of stumps, and a beetle-backed paint-box in which all the colours were whole pans, and not half ones, as they usually are in the boxes you get as presents. In this were beautiful paint-brushes—two camel’s-hair ones and a sable with a point as fine as fine.
“You are a dear, auntie,” he said, with his arms very tight round her waist. He was very happy, and it made him feel more generous than usual. So he said again, “You are a dear. And Elfrida can use the paint-box whenever I’m out, and the camel’s-hair brushes. Not the sable, of course.”
“Oh, Edred, how jolly of you!” said Elfrida, quite touched.
“I’ve got something for Elfrida too,” said Aunt Edith, feeling among the rustling pile of brown paper, and tissue paper, and string, and cardboard, and shavings, that were the husks of Edred’s presents. “Ah, here it is!”
It was a book—a red book with gold pictures on back and cover—and it was called “The Amulet.” So then it was Elfrida’s turn to clasp her aunt round the waist and tell her about her dearness.
“And now to supper,” said the dear. “Roast chicken. And gooseberry pie. And cream.”
To the children, accustomed to the mild uninterestingness of bread and milk for supper, this seemed the crowning wonder of the day. And what a day it had been!
And while they ate the brown chicken, with bread sauce and gravy and stuffing, and the gooseberry pie and cream, the aunt told them of her day.
“It really is a ship,” she said, “and the best thing it brings is that we shan’t let lodgings any more.”