"

William scowled, and his thoughts flew off to the little house in the
dirty back street. It was Christmas Eve. Her father was "comin' out."
She would be waiting, watching with bright, expectant eyes for the
"spread" she had demanded from Father Christmas to welcome her
returning parent. It was a beastly shame. She was a silly little ass,
anyway, not to believe him. He'd told her there wasn't any Father
Christmas.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, I will bring out the three needles
threaded with the three strands of cotton. Watch carefully, ladies and
gentlemen. There! One! Two! Three! Now, I don't advise you young
ladies and gentlemen to try this trick. Needles are very indigestible
to some people. Ha! Ha! Not to me, of course! I can digest
anything--needles, or marbles, or matches, or glass bowls--as you will
soon see. Ha! Ha! Now to proceed, ladies and gentlemen."

William looked at the clock and sighed. Anyway, there'd be supper
soon, and that was a jolly good one, 'cause he'd had a look at it.

Suddenly the inscrutable look left his countenance. He gave a sudden
gasp and his whole face lit up. Joan turned to him.

"Come on!" he whispered, rising stealthily from his seat.

The room was in half darkness and the conjurer was just producing a
white rabbit from his left toe, so that few noticed William's quiet
exit by the window followed by that of the blindly obedient Joan.

"You wait!" he whispered in the darkness of the garden. She waited,
shivering in her little white muslin dress, till he returned from the
stable wheeling a hand-cart, consisting of a large packing case on
wheels and finished with a handle. He wheeled it round to the open
French window that led into the dining-room. "Come on!" he whispered
again.

[Illustration: FEW NOTICED WILLIAM'S EXIT BY THE WINDOW, FOLLOWED BY
THE BLINDLY OBEDIENT JOAN.]

Following his example, she began to carry the plates of sandwiches,
sausage rolls, meat pies, bread and butter, cakes and biscuits of
every variety from the table to the hand-cart. On the top they
balanced carefully the plates of jelly and blanc-mange and dishes of
trifle, and round the sides they packed armfuls of crackers.

At the end she whispered softly, "What's it for, William?"

"It's the secret," he said. "The crorse-me-throat secret I told you."

"Am I going to help?" she said in delight.

He nodded.

"Jus' wait a minute," he added, and crept from the dining-room to the
hall and upstairs