Country life -- England -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Family life -- Fiction; Railroads -- Fiction; Siblings -- Fiction
The morning of the fifteenth was spent very happily in getting the buns
and watching Mother make A. P. on them with pink sugar. You know how
it's done, of course? You beat up whites of eggs and mix powdered sugar
with them, and put in a few drops of cochineal. And then you make a cone
of clean, white paper with a little hole at the pointed end, and put the
pink egg-sugar in at the big end. It runs slowly out at the pointed end,
and you write the letters with it just as though it were a great fat pen
full of pink sugar-ink.
The buns looked beautiful with A. P. on every one, and, when they were
put in a cool oven to set the sugar, the children went up to the village
to collect the honey and the shovel and the other promised things.
The old lady at the Post-office was standing on her doorstep. The
children said “Good morning,” politely, as they passed.
“Here, stop a bit,” she said.
So they stopped.
“Those roses,” said she.
“Did you like them?” said Phyllis; “they were as fresh as fresh. _I_
made the needle-book, but it was Bobbie's present.” She skipped joyously
as she spoke.
“Here's your basket,” said the Post-office woman. She went in and
brought out the basket. It was full of fat, red gooseberries.
“I dare say Perks's children would like them,” said she.
“You ARE an old dear,” said Phyllis, throwing her arms around the old
lady's fat waist. “Perks WILL be pleased.”
“He won't be half so pleased as I was with your needle-book and the tie
and the pretty flowers and all,” said the old lady, patting Phyllis's
shoulder. “You're good little souls, that you are. Look here. I've got a
pram round the back in the wood-lodge. It was got for my Emmie's first,
that didn't live but six months, and she never had but that one. I'd
like Mrs. Perks to have it. It 'ud be a help to her with that great boy
of hers. Will you take it along?”
“OH!” said all the children together.
When Mrs. Ransome had got out the perambulator and taken off the careful
papers that covered it, and dusted it all over, she said:--
“Well, there it is. I don't know but what I'd have given it to her
before if I'd thought of it. Only I didn't quite know if she'd accept of
it from me. You tell her it was my Emmie's little one's pram--”
“Oh, ISN'T it nice to think there is going to be a real live baby in it
again!”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Ransome, sighing, and then laughing; “here, I'll give
you some peppermint cushions for the little ones, and then you run along
before I give you the roof off my head and the clothes off my back.”
All the things that had been collected for Perks were packed into
the perambulator, and at half-past three Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis
wheeled it down to the little yellow house where Perks lived.
The house was very tidy. On the window ledge was a jug of wild-flowers,
big daisies, and red sorrel, and feathery, flowery grasses.
There was a sound of splashing from the wash-house, and a partly washed
boy put his head round the door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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