‘Why, Emmeline, you have been quick!’ he exclaimed, when he came back into the schoolroom and found her there. ‘Oh, I see’—in a disappointed voice, as he caught sight of the glasses still full of milk—‘you haven’t even started.’
‘Yes, I have,’ and she ruefully explained what had happened. ‘I can’t think what made Jane take it into her head to lock up so early just this one evening,’ she concluded. ‘She hardly ever does it before they go to bed.’
‘She has put the shutters up in the dining-room, too,’ remarked Micky. ‘I went in there just now because I thought we might manage to open the dining-room window and get the things out that way.’
‘I don’t think we could have opened that window anyhow; it’s so very stiff and heavy,’ said Emmeline; ‘and, of course, if the shutters are up it’s no good thinking of it. Really, Jane is very tiresome.’
‘She’s the annoyingest person I know,’ declared Kitty in an aggrieved voice. ‘Micky was telling her the loveliest story, and she wouldn’t listen—not one little bit. It was awfully stupid of her—wasn’t it, Emmeline?—besides being so unpolite.’
Emmeline was too much worried over the question of Diamond Jubilee’s supper to give much thought to Jane’s lack of manners.
‘What are we to do?’ she asked in despair. ‘It’s not only that he’ll be so hungry, but it’ll be breaking a promise if we don’t take him some supper.’
‘I’ll jump out of this window, and then you can throw out the glasses for me to catch, like the man at the circus,’ suggested Micky.
‘I dare say! And the glasses would all get broken and the milk spilt,’ said Emmeline, dismissing the idea with scorn. ‘But we might throw the biscuits out like that. That’s what we’ll have to do, I suppose, though it’s a great pity, as we can’t save the milk for his breakfast.’
‘I’ve thought of a plan!’ cried Kitty suddenly; and off she rushed, returning a moment later with an empty hot-water can.