It was spread on a small table, the tablecloth was a kitchen towel, and there was only one tumbler and the barest allowance of knives and forks; but Buff was charmed with his feast, and hospitably eager that his guests should enjoy it. "Come on," he said again. But Thomas, gripping Billy's hand, hung back, and it was seen that he carried a parcel. "I've brought Buff a present," he announced. "Oh, Thomas!" said Elizabeth, "not another! After that lovely box of tools." "Yes," said Thomas firmly. "It's a book--a wee religious book." He handed it to Elizabeth. "It's about angels." Elizabeth did not look at her young brother, but undid the paper, opened the book and read: "It came upon the midnight clear, That glorious song of old, From angels bending near the earth To touch their harps of gold: 'Peace on the earth, good-will to men, From heaven's all-gracious King!' The world in solemn stillness lay To hear the angels sing." "How nice! and the pictures are beautiful, Thomas. It's a lovely present. Look at it, Buff!" Buff looked at it and then he looked at Thomas. "What made you think I wanted a book about angels?" he demanded. "Nothing in your behaviour, old man," his sister hastened to assure him. "D'you know you've never said Thank you!" Buff said it, but there was a marked lack of enthusiasm in his tone. "I didn't buy it," Thomas said, feeling the present needed some explanation. "Aunt Jeanie sent it at Christmas to Papa, and Papa wasn't caring much about angels, and Mamma said I could give it to Buff; she said it might improve him." "I _knew_ he didn't buy it!" shouted Buff, passing over the aspersion on his character. "I knew it all the time. Nobody would _buy_ a book like that: it's the kind that get given you." "Aunt Jeanie sent me the _Prodigal Son_," broke in Billy in his gentle little voice (he often acted as oil to the troubled waters of Buff and Thomas). "I like the picture of the Prodigal eating the swine's husks. There's a big swine looking at him as if it would bite him." "Should think so," Thomas said. "If you were a swine you wouldn't like prodigals coming eating your husks." "I don't think, Billy," said Elizabeth, looking meditatively at him, "that you will ever be a prodigal, but I can quite see Thomas as the elder brother----Ah! here comes Ellen with the sausages!" It was a very successful party, noisy and appreciative, and after they had eaten everything there was to eat, including the toffee, and licked their sticky fingers, they had a concert. Billy sang in a most genteel manner a ribald song about a "cuddy" at Kilmarnock Fair; Buff recited with great vigour what he and Elizabeth between them could remember of "The Ballad of the Revenge"; and Thomas, not to be outdone, thrust Macaulay's Lays into Elizabeth's hands, crying, "Here, hold that, and I'll do How Horatius kept the bridge."