"You dear!"
They said this both together. Then they precipitated themselves at me, and they kissed me--absolute strangers! Then the dolls had breakfast with us. Each sat on a chair beside its proprietor, and I, as it were, sat in the centre of the four. I have seldom assisted at a livelier meal. We laughed and we talked, and we ate and we drank, and we fed the dolls--those dolls had both a large and an indigestible repast. I felt convinced they would suffer for it afterwards. And in the midst of it all I heard a strange voice; at least it was strange to me.
"I beg ten thousand pardons, but I couldn't think what had become of those children--I thought I heard their voices. What are they doing here?"
I looked up and there, standing in the open doorway, was a lady; a young lady, a charming, and, indeed, a pretty young lady. Those two young women flung themselves at her as they had flung themselves at me; only, if anything, more so.
"Mamma! mamma! just look at our dolls! Aren't they beautiful? And when you lay them down they shut their eyes and say good-night."
The lady was their mamma; exactly the right sort of mamma for them to have. I explained, and she explained, and it was all explained. By a most amazing coincidence she was in almost the same plight as I was. She was a Mrs Heathcote; had recently come with her two girls from India; had taken the flat opposite mine in the expectation of her husband joining her by Christmas Day, instead of which his ship had been delayed in the Suez Canal, or somewhere, somehow, and he could not possibly reach her for at any rate a day or two. And on the previous day, Christmas Eve, her cook had behaved in the most abominable manner, and had had to be sent packing, and her sympathetic friend, the housemaid, had gone with her, so that on Christmas Day Mrs Heathcote was positively left without a soul to do a thing for her; precisely my condition. She had gone out to see if temporary help could be procured, and during her absence those two daughters of hers had slipped across to me. She had found no help, so that she had to deal with precisely the same problem which confronted me. She had breakfast with us--and the dolls!--Marjorie explaining that it was she who had cooked the bacon, and in an amazingly short space of time we were all of us on terms of the most delightful sociability.
I insisted that they must all go out with me to lunch at a restaurant. It might not seem to promise much entertainment to have to go for a meal to a place of the kind on Christmas Day, but the girls were delighted. It is my experience that most children like feeding in public, I don't know why, and when pressed their mother was willing, so I was charmed.
"Now," I observed, "that it is settled we are to go somewhere, the question is--where?"
"May I choose?" asked Mrs Heathcote.
"My dear madam, if you only would, you would confer on me a really great favour. On the subject of the choice of a restaurant I consider a lady's opinion to be of the very first importance."