He accepted the two big bags of monkey-nuts and a small piece of milk chocolate (she had judged it best to break off a fraction of that dainty rather than to entrust him with the whole fortnight’s portion), without any particular sign, either of pleasure or disgust. Probably his half hour in the apple-orchard had made him unusually indifferent to what he ate.
‘I shan’t give you any more nuts for three weeks,’ Emmeline told him, ‘so you must be careful of them and not eat too many now. Can I trust you, I wonder? I’d keep them for you only it wouldn’t be convenient.’
It would not have been at all convenient. Jane had a tiresome habit of prying into cupboards and under beds and in all sorts of other places, which the children felt ought to have been considered private; and as another annoying trait in her character was a strong theory that nuts of all kinds were bad for young people, the presence, however unobtrusive, of two large bags of monkey-nuts in the house, would almost certainly have led to trouble.
‘Garn! I aren’t that fond of them monkey-nuts,’ said Diamond Jubilee mildly. He had not the faintest suspicion, poor boy, that they were expected to be his staple food even for that day, let alone for an indefinite number of days to come!
They left him sitting under a hedge eating his chocolate, and with a bag of monkey-nuts on either side of him. Numbers of other nuts which had been spilt out of Micky’s bag when he flung it down, lay scattered about the road, but Diamond Jubilee had made no effort to pick them up.
‘We forgot to tell him anywhere to meet us this afternoon,’ remarked Micky, as he and Emmeline were crossing the garden.
‘Oh, I don’t know that I want to meet him again,’ said Emmeline wearily—‘I mean not this afternoon,’ she added quickly, as Micky looked up at her with round-eyed surprise.
“OH, WHAT SHALL WE DO?” SHE SOBBED.