“Does your mother make cakes for you sometimes?”
“She used to, but she’s too busy now, making blouses and one thing and another,” Elsie answered.
“I suppose she hasn’t much time for cooking,” said Nora, “so I’ve wrapped up some more of those cakes in this parcel for you to take home for tomorrow. I think you can manage to carry it all right, can’t you, Charley?”
“I think I’d better carry it myself,” said Elsie. “Charley’s SO careless, he’s sure to lose some of them.”
“I ain’t no more careless than you are,” cried Charley, indignantly. “What about the time you dropped the quarter of butter you was sent for in the mud?”
“That wasn’t carelessness: that was an accident, and it wasn’t butter at all: it was margarine, so there!”
Eventually it was arranged that they were to carry the parcel in turns, Elsie to have first innings. Frankie went downstairs to the front door with them to see them off, and as they went down the street he shouted after them:
“Mind you remember, next Sunday!”
“All right,” Charley shouted back. “We shan’t forget.”
On Thursday Owen stayed at home until after breakfast to finish the designs which he had promised to have ready that morning.