Artie and Daisy, in snow-white suits, have breakfasted down stairs, and are now curled up in comfortable sofa-corners, reading the “Children’s Magazine.” Hugh’s voice is heard through the open window, as he sings—
“I am passing, passing, passing over Jordan,”
to the accompaniment of jingling spoons and clattering dishes, whilst Celia and Nan have stolen up to the nursery for a half-hour’s chat with Charlotte, and to aid at the morning bath.
Little Bear wakes languid and fretful, entirely unwilling that good old Celia should aid, or even touch him, whilst the two Monkeys chatter and splash in their bath, good-natured and merry, as if they had only travelled to the Park and back.
Splashed and bathed, rubbed and scrubbed, brushed and flushed, the little folk draw around the waiting table, and can scarcely eat for laughing at the prodigious joke that they,—
“Have real-for-fair beef-steak, like grown-up folk, and buttered toast.”
Suddenly, the door opens to admit Papa, and then the laugh has to be repeated with him, so funny it is that “little Monkeys and Bears should go to visit, and be fed on cooked beef-steak and buttered toast.”
“Papa is all drest
In his Sunday best,
so, carefully avoids the little buttered fingers, soon waving good-bye, for the bells are tolling Church-time, and Aunt Emma, Daisy, and Artie are waiting below.