“Leave a woman to find that out,” said John admiringly. “Now, a man would never have thought of it! But it’s my belief that if you packed a wedding cake in a tea-chest, or in a feather bed, or in salmon-keg, a woman would be sure to find it out directly. Yes, I called for it at the pastry-cook’s.”
“And it weighs, I don’t know what—whole hundred weights!” cried Dot, making a great show of trying to lift it. “Whose is it, John? Where is it going?”
“Read the writing on the other side,” said John.
“Why, John! My goodness, John!” exclaimed Dot.
“Ah! Who’d have thought it!” John returned.
“You never mean to say,” asked Dot, sitting on the floor and shaking her head at him, “that it’s for Gruff and Tackleton, the toy-maker!”
John nodded. Mrs. Peerybingle nodded also, fifty times at least—in dumb and pitying amazement.
And Tilly Slowboy, the nurse-maid, and helper of all work, began to talk in an undertone to the baby, who had awakened, as she walked to and fro with him in her arms: “Was it for Gruffs and Tackletons, then, and would it call at the pastry-cooks’ for wedding cakes, and did its mothers know the boxes when its fathers brought them home;” and so on.
“And that marriage is really to come about!” said Dot, after seeing that the baby was all right. “Why, she and I were girls at school together, John.”
John might have been thinking of how Dot looked then, but he made no answer.