So she ate her little triangles of toast—made in a particularly fascinating way peculiar to Grannie's housekeeping—without enjoying the scrunch, scrunch between her teeth so much as usual. Even the early strawberries and cream found her somewhat absent-minded.
But after tea was cleared away and the room tidied up, Aunt Mary disappeared for a short time and returned with her hands behind her back. She stood before Mollie, and in a solemn voice chanted the following words:
"Neevie neevie nick nack,
Which hand will ye tak?
Tak the right or tak the wrong,
I'll beguile ye if I can."
This was too interesting to be ignored. Mollie sat up and became her ordinary self again. She looked critically at Aunt Mary's arms, shoulders, and eyes, but got no information from any of these. Then she laughed:
"I won't have the wrong, please, I'll have the right."
Aunt Mary laughed too. "You are too clever, Miss Mollie. That is not the way I did neevie-neevie when I was young." She brought her right hand round as she spoke, and in it was a charming box, large, varnished, and clamped at the corners with brass. She laid it on Mollie's lap, and watched the sliding lid being pulled out by a pair of impatient hands. It was a beautiful jig-saw puzzle.
"Oh, where did you get it?" Mollie cried joyfully. "I adore jig-saw puzzles. You are a lovely, lovely aunt!" and she held out her arms for a hug and a kiss.
"Well," said Aunt Mary, smiling with pleasure at the success of her surprise, "I remembered how fond you are of jig-saws, so yesterday, as soon as you had fallen asleep, I wired to Hamley's. I was not sure if it would arrive to-day, so I did not tell you. Now, let us see what it is—a map! Oh, dear me, I hope you won't find a map dull!"
Grannie, who loved jig-saws almost as much as Mollie did, had drawn up a substantial table to the sofa and seated herself beside it. "Dull!" she said reprovingly, "I hope not indeed. Maps are the most interesting puzzles one can have. What is it a map of?"
"We'll soon find that out," said Mollie, laying a very jagged section upon the table and studying it with interest. "What funny names—Weeah! Where's that? It sounds like China."