ook like people a stewardess would dare trifle
with.

"Perhaps she thinks we're younger than we are," she said after a
silence.

"Yes. She couldn't see how long our dresses are, because of the rug."

"No. And it's only that end of us that really shows we're grown up."

"Yes. She ought to have seen us six months ago."

Indeed she ought. Even the stewardess would have been surprised at the
activities and complete appearance of the two pupae now rolled motionless
in the rug. For, six months ago, they had both been probationers in a
children's hospital in Worcestershire, arrayed, even as the stewardess,
in spotless caps, hurrying hither and thither with trays of food,
sweeping and washing up, learning to make beds in a given time, and be
deft, and quick, and never tired, and always punctual.

This place had been got them by the efforts and influence of their Aunt
Alice, that aunt who had given them the rug on their departure and who
had omitted to celebrate their birthday. She was an amiable aunt, but
she didn't understand about birthdays. It was the first one they had had
since they were complete orphans, and so they were rather sensitive
about it. But they hadn't cried, because since their mother's death they
had done with crying. What could there ever again be in the world bad
enough to cry about after that? And besides, just before she dropped
away from them into the unconsciousness out of which she never came
back, but instead just dropped a little further into death, she had
opened her eyes unexpectedly and caught them sitting together in a row
by her bed, two images of agony, with tears rolling down their swollen
faces and their noses in a hopeless state, and after looking at them a
moment as if she had slowly come up from some vast depth and distance
and were gradually recognizing them, she had whispered with a flicker of
the old encouraging smile that had comforted every hurt and bruise they
had ever had, "_Don't cry_ ... little darlings, _don't_ cry...."

But on that first birthday after her death they had got more and more
solemn as time passed, and breakfast was cleared away, and there were no
sounds, prick up their ears as they might, of subdued preparations in
the next room, no stealthy going up and down stairs to fetch the
presents, and at last no hope at all of the final glorious flinging open
of the door and the vision inside of two cakes all glittering with
candles, each on a table covered with flow