In November, of course, the
flowers were chrysanthemums, yellow and coppery coloured. Then
there were always sausages on toast for breakfast, and these are
rapture, after six days of Kentish Town Road eggs at fourteen a
shilling.
On this particular Sunday there were fowls for dinner, a kind of
food that is generally kept for birthdays and grand occasions, and
there was an angel pudding, when rice and milk and oranges and
white icing do their best to make you happy.
After dinner father was very sleepy indeed, because he had been
working hard all the week; but he did not yield to the voice that
said, 'Go and have an hour's rest.' He nursed the Lamb, who had a
horrid cough that cook said was whooping-cough as sure as eggs, and
he said--
'Come along, kiddies; I've got a ripping book from the library,
called The Golden Age, and I'll read it to you.'
Mother settled herself on the drawing-room sofa, and said she could
listen quite nicely with her eyes shut. The Lamb snugged into the
'armchair corner' of daddy's arm, and the others got into a happy
heap on the hearth-rug. At first, of course, there were too many
feet and knees and shoulders and elbows, but real comfort was
actually settling down on them, and the Phoenix and the carpet were
put away on the back top shelf of their minds (beautiful things
that could be taken out and played with later), when a surly solid
knock came at the drawing-room door.
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