* * * * * *
“Jolly good little kids, those,” said Mr. Perks to his wife as they went to bed.
“Oh, they're all right, bless their hearts,” said his wife; “it's you that's the aggravatingest old thing that ever was. I was ashamed of you—I tell you—”
“You didn't need to be, old gal. I climbed down handsome soon as I understood it wasn't charity. But charity's what I never did abide, and won't neither.”
* * * * * *
All sorts of people were made happy by that birthday party. Mr. Perks and Mrs. Perks and the little Perkses by all the nice things and by the kind thoughts of their neighbours; the Three Chimneys children by the success, undoubted though unexpectedly delayed, of their plan; and Mrs. Ransome every time she saw the fat Perks baby in the perambulator. Mrs. Perks made quite a round of visits to thank people for their kind birthday presents, and after each visit felt that she had a better friend than she had thought.
“Yes,” said Perks, reflectively, “it's not so much what you does as what you means; that's what I say. Now if it had been charity—”
“Oh, drat charity,” said Mrs. Perks; “nobody won't offer you charity, Bert, however much you was to want it, I lay. That was just friendliness, that was.”
When the clergyman called on Mrs. Perks, she told him all about it. “It WAS friendliness, wasn't it, Sir?” said she.
“I think,” said the clergyman, “it was what is sometimes called loving-kindness.”