Mrs. Perks only sobbed. The Perks children, now as shiny-faced as anyone
could wish, stood at the wash-house door, and scowled at the intruders.
There was a silence, an awkward silence.

"DON'T you like it?" said Peter, again, while his sisters patted Mrs.
Perks on the back.

She stopped crying as suddenly as she had begun.

"There, there, don't you mind me. I'M all right!" she said. "Like it?
Why, it's a birthday such as Perks never 'ad, not even when 'e was a boy
and stayed with his uncle, who was a corn chandler in his own account.
He failed afterwards. Like it? Oh--" and then she went on and said all
sorts of things that I won't write down, because I am sure that Peter
and Bobbie and Phyllis would not like me to. Their ears got hotter and
hotter, and their faces redder and redder, at the kind things Mrs. Perks
said. They felt they had done nothing to deserve all this praise.

At last Peter said: "Look here, we're glad you're pleased. But if you go
on saying things like that, we must go home. And we did want to stay and
see if Mr. Perks is pleased, too. But we can't stand this."

"I won't say another single word," said Mrs. Perks, with a beaming face,
"but that needn't stop me thinking, need it? For if ever--"

"Can we have a plate for the buns?" Bobbie asked abruptly. And then Mrs.
Perks hastily laid the table for tea, and the buns and the honey and
the gooseberries were displayed on plates, and the roses were put in two
glass jam jars, and the tea-table looked, as Mrs. Perks said, "fit for a
Prince."

"To think!" she said, "me getting the place tidy early, and the little
'uns getting the wild-flowers and all--when never did I think there'd be
anything more for him except the ounce of his pet particular that I
got o' Saturday and been saving up for 'im ever since. Bless us! 'e IS
early!"

Perks had indeed unlatched the latch of the little front gate.

"Oh," whispered Bobbie, "let's hide in the back kitchen, and YOU tell
him about it. But give him the tobacco first, because you got it for
him. And when you've told him, we'll all come in and shout, 'Many happy
returns!'"

It was a very nice plan, but it did not quite come off. To begin with,
there was only just time for Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis to rush into
the wash-house, pushing the young and open-mouthed Perks children in
front of them. There was not time to shut the door, so that, without at
all meaning it, they had to listen to what went on in