"It isn't her jam," I said. "It's Uncle Geoff's, and indeed I shouldn't wonder if the strawberries were from our garden. I remember mother always used to say 'We must send some fruit to Geoff.'"
"Yes," said Tom, "I remember that too." He was just about biting into a large slice of bread and butter without jam—I had kept to old rules and told the boys they must eat one big piece "plain," first—when a new idea struck him.
"Audrey," he said, "do you know what would be lovely? Supposing we made toast. I don't think there's anything so nice as toast with strawberry jam."
Tom looked at me with so touching an expression in his dark eyes—he might have been making some most pathetic request—that I really could not resist him. Besides which, to confess the truth, the proposal found great favour in my own eyes. I looked consideringly at the ready-cut slices of bread and butter.
"They're very thick for toast," I said, "and the worst of it is they're all buttered already."
"That wouldn't matter," said Tom, "it'd be buttered toast. That's the nicest of all."
"It wouldn't, you stupid boy," I said, forgetting my dignity; "the butter would all melt before the bread was toasted, and there'd be no butter at all when it was done. But I'll tell you what we might do; let's scrape off all the butter we can, and then spread it on the toast again when it's ready, before the fire. That's how I've seen Pierson do. I mean that she spread it on before the fire—of course she didn't have to scrape it off first."
"I should think not," said Tom; "it's only that horrid Mrs. Partridge makes us have to do such things."
We set to work eagerly enough however, notwithstanding our indignation. With the help of our tea-spoons we scraped off a good deal of butter and put it carefully aside ready to be spread on again.
"The worst of it is it'll be such awfully thick toast," I said, looking at the sturdy slices with regret. "I wish we could split them."