at Oxford, found one and split it with Father, and the
next morning he said, "Bon-jour-Philippine" first and then asked for a
present. Father asked him what he wanted, and he gave Father a letter that
he had had that morning. Father got very angry and said that it was a
disgrace the way tailors allowed credit to young wasters nowadays. He
didn't say it quite like that, it was rather worse, and Mother said, "Hush,
dear; remember the children," and Father said that they were all as bad and
in the conspiracy to ruin him, and he went out of the room and banged the
door.

Mother told Jack that he should have chosen a better moment, and Jack owned
he had made a mistake and said that he ought to have got it in before
Father had looked at the paper and seen the latest news of LLOYD GEORGE. I
don't quite know what he meant, but Father often talks about LLOYD GEORGE,
and he must be a beast.

I asked Jack later if he got his present, and he said that he had, but--and
here he copied Father's voice so well that I had to laugh--"It is the very
last time, my boy; when I was at Oxford I used to consider my Father, and I
would have worked in the fields and earned money sooner than have given him
bills to pay." Jack said that he knew one of the dons at Oxford who knew
Father, and from what he said he thought that Father must have spent as
long in the fields as NEBUCHADNEZZAR did.

I remembered all this as I went to find mother about "Rabbits," and I
wasn't quite sure that we should get our present even if we did say it, so
I told Angela, and she had a brilliant idea. "We will make Father say
'Rabbits' and give him a present ourselves, and he is sure to give us
something in return." Angela is younger than I am, but she often thinks
quite clever things like that, and they come in very useful sometimes.

We went to the summer-house in the garden to make plans. First we thought
what would be the best present to give Father. Last Christmas we gave him a
pipe, and he said that it was just what he wanted; it cost ninepence and
was made like a man's head, and you put the tobacco in a hole in his hat.

Father lit it at once after breakfast, but two days after I saw Jakes the
gardener smoking it. We thought at first that he had stolen it, and I went
to Father, but he said that Jakes had thirteen children, and when a man was
in trouble like that you ought to give up what you valued most to try to
make that man happy, and that Jakes was awfully p