Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 25th, 1920

by Various

That seemed to terminate the interview, so we left him; but altogether it was not very satisfactory. You see, when we had "Bon-jour-Philippines," Father used to provide the presents; at least that was some time ago; we haven't had any "Bon-jour-Philippines" lately. The last time we did, Jack, that is my brother at Oxford, found one and split it with Father, and the next morning he said, "Bon-jour-Philippine" first and then asked for a present. Father asked him what he wanted, and he gave Father a letter that he had had that morning. Father got very angry and said that it was a disgrace the way tailors allowed credit to young wasters nowadays. He didn't say it quite like that, it was rather worse, and Mother said, "Hush, dear; remember the children," and Father said that they were all as bad and in the conspiracy to ruin him, and he went out of the room and banged the door.

Mother told Jack that he should have chosen a better moment, and Jack owned he had made a mistake and said that he ought to have got it in before Father had looked at the paper and seen the latest news of Lloyd George. I don't quite know what he meant, but Father often talks about Lloyd George, and he must be a beast.

I asked Jack later if he got his present, and he said that he had, but—and here he copied Father's voice so well that I had to laugh—"It is the very last time, my boy; when I was at Oxford I used to consider my Father, and I would have worked in the fields and earned money sooner than have given him bills to pay." Jack said that he knew one of the dons at Oxford who knew Father, and from what he said he thought that Father must have spent as long in the fields as Nebuchadnezzar did.

I remembered all this as I went to find mother about "Rabbits," and I wasn't quite sure that we should get our present even if we did say it, so I told Angela, and she had a brilliant idea. "We will make Father say 'Rabbits' and give him a present ourselves, and he is sure to give us something in return." Angela is younger than I am, but she often thinks quite clever things like that, and they come in very useful sometimes.

We went to the summer-house in the garden to make plans. First we thought what would be the best present to give Father. Last Christmas we gave him a pipe, and he said that it was just what he wanted; it cost ninepence and was made like a man's head, and you put the tobacco in a hole in his hat.

Father lit it at once after breakfast, but two days after I saw Jakes the gardener smoking it. We thought at first that he had stolen it, and I went to Father, but he said that Jakes had thirteen children, and when a man was in trouble like that you ought to give up what you valued most to try to make that man happy, and that Jakes was awfully pleased when he gave him the pipe.

You see that made it very difficult, as we had to get something that Father would like and Jakes too, as he still had thirteen children; and then I remembered that Mrs. Jakes had once looked at a woollen jumper that I had on, and said that it would be just the thing for her Mary Ann, who had a delicate chest, and Jakes would be sure to like what Mrs. Jakes liked, or else he wouldn't have married her. Of course a jumper wasn't really the sort of thing that Father could wear, but I thought he might wrap his foot up in it when he next had gout, and besides I shouldn't be wanting it much more myself, as the summer was coming on.

Angela said that she thought that would do well, and she wouldn't mind giving Father her jumper next month if he said "Rabbits," and it would do for Mrs. Jakes' next little girl.

So that was decided, and then we had to arrange the plan. The most important thing was for us to wake before Father, so that we could wake him and remind him before he had time to say anything else, and Angela remembered that Ellen, that's the housemaid, had an alarm clock, which she used to set at a quarter to six each morning. We waited until Ellen had gone downstairs and then took it and hid it in Angela's bed.

Next morning the clock went off. We were both rather frightened, and it was very cold and the room looked funny, as the blinds hadn't been pulled up, but we put our dressing-gowns on. Then Angela said that she had heard that if you woke a person who was walking in their sleep they sometimes called out, so I took a pair of stockings from the basket that had just come back from the wash to hold over Father's mouth while we woke him. They were waiting to be mended and had a hole in them, but that didn't matter much, as I screwed them up tight, and then we went into Father's room. They were both asleep, and Father had his mouth open all ready for the stockings, which was very lucky, as I was wondering how I could get them in.