"Ranny," she said, "I wish you'd get away somewhere for Christmas. Me and Mabel'll look after the children. You go."
He said there wasn't anywhere he cared to go to.
"Well—is there anything you'd like to do?"
"To do?"
"For Christmas, dear. To make it not so sad like. Is there anybody," she said, "you'd like to ask?"
No, there wasn't. At any rate, if there was he wouldn't ask them. It wouldn't be exactly what you'd call fun for them, with the poor old Humming-bird making faces at them all the time.
His mother looked at him shrewdly and said nothing. But she sat down and wrote a letter to Winny Dymond, asking her to come and spend Christmas Day with them, if, said Mrs. Ransome, she hadn't anywhere better to go to and didn't mind a sad house.
And Winny came. She hadn't anywhere better to go to, and she didn't mind a sad house in the least.
They wondered, Ranny and his mother, how they were ever going to break it to the Humming-bird.
"Your Father won't like it, Ranny. He's not fit for it. He'll think us heartless, having strangers in the house when he's suffering so."