(We feel sure that Nurse would not have allowed it by ourselves, and would have called it "playing with fire," but Father looked in at us once, and did not stop us at all, but only said we were very good, and Cook and Sarah kept looking in too, and they were very kind, only rather quiet and queer.)
So that was how it was that we came to be allowed to be roasting chestnuts in the drawing-room by ourselves, which does seem a little funny, if you did not know about that dreadful day.
"There's only two left now," Rupert said.
We hadn't eaten all the plateful, of course, because so many of them, when they popped, had popped quite into the fire, and we were not to try to get them out.
We had roasted one each for Sarah, and for Cook, and for Nurse, and for Father, and of course the biggest of all for Mother.
We thought she might enjoy it when she got better. And they were all done, and there were only two left besides what we had eaten and lost.
So we put them together on the bar to roast, and Rupert said:
"One for you, and one for me. Yours is the light one, and mine is the dark one."
And I said: