‘Jean knows everything,’ murmured Angela, as she found the hook and squeezed successfully through the window.
‘What shall we take?’ whispered Babs, slipping after her into the dimly lighted larder. ‘I think they’d like jam tart and plum-pudding, don’t you?’
She shifted the two delicacies dearest to her heart on to one dish, and handed it up to Jean, who stood poised uncertainly on the edge of the water-butt.
‘The jelly and the cranberry pie look rather nice,’ said Angela, her own mouth watering for them, as she passed them out to Jean.
‘Can’t you find something substantial?’ urged Jean, when she had deposited the second load on the ground beside the water-butt.
The two children in the larder looked round at the well-stocked shelves. There was cold beef, to be sure, and a large tureen of mutton broth; but these did not strike them as being at all the sort of present that any one would like to have.
‘Apple dumplings,’ settled Angela, swiftly, as her eye fell on a large dish full of them; and they handed the apple dumplings after the other things, and then followed them by way of the water-butt to the impatient Jean, who had already loaded herself with the jelly and the cranberry pie.
‘Come along!’ said Jean. ‘If we’re not quick, we shall be late for tea. Besides, we must get back to see Finny, and explain to her what we’ve done. She might be cross if she found it out for herself.’
‘Are you sure she won’t be cross anyhow?’ asked Barbara, as she staggered along in her wake, carrying the dish that contained the plum-pudding and the jam tart.
‘Not if we explain exactly why we did it,’ said Angela, gasping for breath just behind her companions. She found the apple dumplings decidedly weighty.