For Stewart she bought two large cabbages. "Won't Peter have a lovely Christmas dinner?" she queried ecstatically. "And he'll be so sad, you see, with Tommy and his mother away a whole week!"
That afternoon Nell and Molly came suddenly face to face in a draper's shop, and exactly as they did it, up came the bland shop-walker to know what they wanted. He stared with dignified disapproval, as they stood there and laughed and laughed. Nell wanted a charming little useless fancy box for Molly that she had seen in the window, and Molly wanted a little handkerchief for Nell.
"I—er—oh!" Nell laughed ridiculously and Molly turned, giggling, and fled from the shop.
Nell made a valiant effort, "I want a little bancy fox—oh!" and she fled after Molly.
Outside she stood and laughed helplessly. A little way farther up the street she could see Molly, and the knowledge that she too was trying to overcome her giggles made matters much worse.
Neither she nor Molly alluded to that meeting till after Christmas. There was a very strict O'Brien etiquette on such matters.
On that Christmas Eve they gave pennies away recklessly to poor children. They treated a whole family—mother two little girls, a little boy, and a baby, all eminently clean, but hungry-faced—to a hearty tea at a confectioner's, and presented them with a bunch of holly, and a shilling over and beyond the tea. They bought an old man with crutches half a pound of his favourite tobacco, because he was gazing longingly at it in a tobacconist's window. His poor old eyes grew very watery as he accepted it and declared with shaky fervour that "King Edward himself couldn't have given him anything he'd like better."
The account-book was thrust to the back of a drawer, and to the back of everyone's mind as well. They locked themselves mysteriously into their bedrooms; and there was a sudden dearth of paper and string. The whole day was rush and hurry and bustle and fun.
In the evening Nell put her last stitch into Ted's tie.
"'Tis done! 'Tis done! Denis, go forth! Bring thy friend to our hospitable portals and bid him enter. Guide him to this our Stronghold, and leave him with us. Retire thyself to thy bedroom, where, secreted beneath thy bed, thou shalt find a fair fat stocking, once a foot-ball stocking that clad thine own unworthy leg. Take it to thy manly bosom, creep down the stairs, and hie thee to the house of that same Ted Lancaster, our very good friend. Crave speech with the stately butler—"