He was a very funny man, Joe!
When the general excitement had subsided, and Teddy, who had in the meantime been stalking about, a comical little figure, attired in Mary’s flannel petticoat, was re-dressed in the fresh suit of clothes Joe had brought for him amidst the blankets, the whole party adjourned up the hill to their old rendezvous under the elm-tree.
Here they found, greatly to their surprise and gratification, that Jupp’s well-built fire had not gone out, as all expected, during the unforeseen digression that had occurred to break the even tenor of their afternoon’s entertainment, although left so long unattended to.
On the contrary, it was blazing away at a fine rate, with the kettle slung on the forked sticks above it singing and sputtering, emitting clouds of steam the while, “like an engine blowing off,” as the porter observed; so, all their preparations having been already completed, the children carried out their original intention of having a festal tea in honour of “Pa’s birthday,” he being set in their midst and told to do nothing, being the guest of the occasion.
Never did bread and butter taste more appetisingly to the little ones than when thus eaten out in the woods, away from all such stuck-up surroundings as tables and chairs, and plates, and cups and saucers, and the other absurd conventionalities of everyday life. They only had three little tin pannikins for their tea, which they passed round in turn, and a basket for their dish, using a leaf when the luxury of a plate was desired by any sybarite of the party—those nice broad ones of the dock making splendid platters.
Now, besides bread and butter, Molly the cook had compounded a delicious dough-cake for them, having plums set in it at signal distances apart, so conspicuous that any one could know they were there without going to the trouble of counting them, which indeed would not have taken long to do, their number being rather limited; and, what with the revulsion of feeling at Teddy’s providential escape, and the fact of having papa with them, and all, they were in the very seventh heaven of enjoyment.
Conny and Cissy, who were the most active of the sprites, assisted by the more deliberate Teddy and Liz, acted as “the grown-up people” attending as hostesses and host to the requirements of “the children,” as they called their father and Mary and Jupp, not omitting Joe the gardener, who, squatting down on the extreme circumference of their little circle, kept up a perpetual grin over the acres of bread and butter he consumed, just as if he were having a real meal and not merely playing!
The worthy gardener was certainly the skeleton, or cormorant, so to speak, of the banquet, eating them almost out of house and home, it must be mentioned in all due confidence; and, taking watch of his depravity of behaviour in this respect, the thoughtful Conny registered an inward determination never to invite Joe to another of their al fresco feasts, if she could possibly avoid doing so without seriously wounding his sensibilities. The way he walked into that dough-cake would have made anyone almost cry.
The fête, however, excepting this drawback, passed off successfully enough without any other contretemps; and after the last crumb of cake had been eaten by Joe, and the things packed up, the little party wended their way home happily in the mellow May evening, through the fields green with the sprouting corn, with the swallows skimming round them and the lark high in the sky above singing her lullaby song for the night and flopping down to her nest.
Towards the end of the month, however, Teddy managed somehow or other to get into another scrape.