To begin with, we left it to the very afternoon of the birthday because the others said that when the children came, we could go straight on and needn’t dress up twice. Only it made me feel nervous, and then, just as we were starting, cook sent up word that she was bothered enough with extra to tea and couldn’t let us have anything for the banquet in “_Young Lochinvar_.” It was really because there’d been a fuss about the butcher’s bill; as if we could help that! The others were very good, I must say, and Humphrey said that he’d give us a Brazil nut that he’d got, and lend us his peppermint. It’s a most enormous one, that goes different colours as you suck, and he keeps it for when he’s put in the corner. And Violet said she’d put some of her doll’s sham dishes on the table; still, that wasn’t very much for a wedding feast. So I said perhaps we’d better pretend that they had had the feast before the curtain drew up, and there could be just a goblet of water for Young Lochinvar to quaff. “He couldn’t have been very thirsty when he had just ‘swum the Esk river,’ and he would enjoy the peppermint because----” Humphrey began, but I told him quickly that we wouldn’t have any eating or drinking at all, for when he once begins explaining anything he never stops. Besides, it was only because he remembered that he was to be Young Lochinvar himself. So we began to dress up, and when they were all ready, they looked so nice and real that I began to feel happier. Humphrey had on my white flannel pyjamas with a red sash, like we always have for the hero; they’re rather big for him, but he wears nightshirts himself, for though he isn’t very strong, he never catches cold, and of course you couldn’t be a hero in a nightshirt. The worst of it was that it looked rather bare at the back, because the hero always has Mother’s fur-lined cape, inside out, across his shoulders and we hadn’t got that, nor Mother either, so we began to feel rather miserable. Even Father was not there. He had gone out to Mother for the Easter Holidays. Violet had on the lace window-curtains and Mother’s old blue silk dress that she has given us for dressing-up, and Teddy wore his pyjamas with a green sash, of course, because he was the villain; at least, he wasn’t exactly a villain, but he was a very disagreeable and horrid sort of father for any one to have. He had on a tow beard, too, that I made out of some that was over when Fräulein did the grates, and I’m sure Mother won’t like them, though Fräulein does think them so beautiful, but the beard wasn’t a great success because it would come off in the middle.