[CHAPTER IV]
'GEORDIE STOOD UP AND WAVED HIS CAP'
No—papa and mamma had not been thinking of anything of that kind—afterwards mamma told me they had only been saying to each other how sweet and pretty it all looked and—though perhaps they did not say so aloud—feeling no doubt how sad it was that we should so soon have to leave it.
But they came in quite brightly, and mamma answered gaily to Esmé's exclamations about the 'lovely tea-party.'
'Yes,' she said, 'it does look nice. And muffins too'—as Geordie glanced up with a very red face from the fire where he was toasting one; 'don't scorch yourself too much, in our service, my dear boy.'
'It's a good bit for myself as well,' said Geordie in his rather gruff way. He always spoke like that if he thought he was being praised—above all, the least over-praised. 'I like muffins better than any kind of cake or things.'
He certainly knew how to toast and butter them to perfection. I remember how very good they were that day. Indeed, the tea-party was a great success altogether. After it was over we carried all the cups and saucers and plates into the kitchen, to be ready for Margery to wash up, for mamma had left word at home that she was to come down to the hut to do so, which we were very glad of.
'I wanted to be together as much as possible to-day,' said mamma in her kind way. And just as we had cleared away everything in the parlour we saw Margery coming, and to my great delight Esmé asked if she and Denzil might 'help her' in the kitchen, for Dods and I had been wondering how we could get rid of the little ones without seeming unkind.
So off they ran, and then for a few minutes we four—'big ones,' I was going to say, only that does seem putting Geordie and myself too much on a line with papa and mamma, doesn't it?—sat silent. I was feeling rather nervous, not afraid of papa and mamma, but afraid of them thinking it was all a perfectly impossible plan.