"But we can't," said Tom, "we've no knife. What a shame it is not to let us have a knife, not even you, Audrey, and I'm sure you are big enough."
"I've a great mind to keep one back from dinner to-morrow," I said, "I don't believe they'd notice. Tom, it's rather fun having to plan so, isn't it? It's something like being prisoners, and Mrs. Partridge being the—the— I don't know what they call the man that shuts up the prisoners."
"No, I don't mean that. The policeman only takes them to prison, he doesn't keep them when they are once there. But let's get on with the toast, or our tea'll be all cold before we're ready for it."
We made holes at the crusty side of the slices, and tied them with string.
It was no good thinking of splitting the slices, we had to make the best of them, thick as they were. And it took all our planningness to do without a toasting-fork. The tea-spoons were so short that it burnt our hands to hold them so near the fire, and for a minute or two we were quite in despair. At last we managed it. We made holes at the crusty side of the slices, and tied them with string—of which, of course, there were always plenty of bits in Tom's pockets; I believe if he'd been in a desert island for a year he still would have found bits of string to put in his pockets—to the end of the poker and to the two ends of the tongs. They dangled away beautifully; two succeeded admirably, the third unfortunately was hopelessly burnt. We repeated the operation for another set of slices, which all succeeded, then we spread them with the scraped butter in front of the fire by means of the flat ends of our tea-spoons, and at last, very hot, very buttery, very hungry, but triumphant, we sat round the table again to regale ourselves with our tepid tea, but beautifully hot toast, whose perfection was completed by a good thick layer of strawberry jam.
We had eaten three slices, and were just about considering how we could quite fairly divide the remaining two among the three of us,—rather a puzzle, for Tom's proposal that he and I should each take a slice and give Racey half, didn't do.
"That would give Racey a half more than us—at least a quarter more. No, it wouldn't be a quarter either. Any way, that wouldn't do," I said. "Let's cut each slice into three bits and each take two."