Her own tea began
usually when everybody else had finished--and lasted--well, some time.
'Here's a letter I got,' announced Jimbo, pulling a very dirty scrap
of paper from a pocket hidden beneath many folds of blouse. 'You'd
like to see it.' He handed it across the round table, and Rogers took
it politely. 'Thank you very much; it came by this morning's post, did
it?'
'Oh, no,' was the reply, as though a big correspondence made the date
of little importance. 'Not by _that_ post.' But Monkey blurted out
with the jolly laughter that was her characteristic sound, 'It came
ages ago. He's had it in his pocket for weeks.'
Jimbo, ignoring the foolish interruption, watched his cousin's face,
while Jinny gave her sister a secret nudge that every one could see.
'Darling Jimbo,' was what Rogers read, 'I have been to school, and did
strokes and prickings and marched round. I am like you now. A fat kiss
and a hug, your loving---' The signature was illegible, lost amid
several scratchy lines in a blot that looked as if a beetle had
expired after violent efforts in a pool of ink.
'Very nice indeed, very well put,' said Rogers, handing it gravely
back again, while some one explained that the writer, aged five, had
just gone to a kindergarten school in Geneva. 'And have you answered
it?'
'Oh, yes.
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