So Freda went on being naughtier and naughtier, and the room upstairs became fuller and fuller of other children, but the lady whose little girl was giving the party didn’t like to say anything because she thought, “Freda is an only child, and, anyhow, I needn’t ask her another time.” And Freda’s nurse didn’t like to say anything because (as I have already told you) she was afraid that Freda might disgrace her by lying down on the floor and bellowing at the top of her voice.
Is that all perfectly clear? Well, now we get on to what happened next.
All the children went into the dining-room, where there were so many buns and chocolates and crackers and pink cakes and sandwiches and other things of this nature that their eyes nearly popped out of their heads. And in the middle of the biggest table there was an enormous cake, and on the top of the enormous cake there was a rather smaller cake, and on the top of the rather smaller cake there was a golden star.
And as soon as Freda saw this golden star, she pointed at it (which, of course, she shouldn’t have done) and said in a very loud, clear voice: “I WANT THAT STAR.”
If only her nurse had heard these words, she would most certainly have said something which would have made Freda lie down on the floor and bellow at the top of her voice. For there is no need to explain how naughty it is to point at things in other people’s houses and say that you want them. No grown-up person would ever dream of doing a thing like that.
But, as a matter of fact, the nurse had just met another nurse who was a great friend of hers, and although they had had a long talk in the Park only that very morning, they still found they had so much to tell each other that neither of them heard what Freda was saying.
Is that all perfectly clear? Well, now Freda really is going to be naughty.
For I am grieved to say that, having pushed a number of other children out of the way (several of whom cried and had to be taken to sit upstairs) she went on pushing until she had got right up to the middle table. And then, when no one was looking, she stood up very quickly on a chair and snatched at the golden star.
I really don’t know what, exactly, she meant to do with it, because she had no pocket in her party frock; and very likely if she had been left to herself she would have got tired of the golden star and dropped it under the table.
But just at this moment a little boy in a white silk blouse looked up and saw what she had done.