conspicuous that any one could know they were there without going to
the trouble of counting them, which indeed would not have taken long to
do, their number being rather limited; and, what with the revulsion of
feeling at Teddy's providential escape, and the fact of having papa with
them, and all, they were in the very seventh heaven of enjoyment.

Conny and Cissy, who were the most active of the sprites, assisted by
the more deliberate Teddy and Liz, acted as "the grown-up people"
attending as hostesses and host to the requirements of "the children,"
as they called their father and Mary and Jupp, not omitting Joe the
gardener, who, squatting down on the extreme circumference of their
little circle, kept up a perpetual grin over the acres of bread and
butter he consumed, just as if he were having a real meal and not merely
playing!

The worthy gardener was certainly the skeleton, or cormorant, so to
speak, of the banquet, eating them almost out of house and home, it must
be mentioned in all due confidence; and, taking watch of his depravity
of behaviour in this respect, the thoughtful Conny registered an inward
determination never to invite Joe to another of their al fresco feasts,
if she could possibly avoid doing so without seriously wounding his
sensibilities. The way he walked into that dough-cake would have made
anyone almost cry.

The fete, however, excepting this drawback, passed off successfully
enough without any other contretemps; and after the last crumb of cake
had been eaten by Joe, and the things packed up, the little party wended
their way home happily in the mellow May evening, through the fields
green with the sprouting corn, with the swallows skimming round them and
the lark high in the sky above singing her lullaby song for the night
and flopping down to her nest.

Towards the end of the month, however, Teddy managed somehow or other to
get into another scrape.

"There never was such a boy," as Mary said. He was "always in hot
water."

The queen's birthday coming round soon after the vicar's, Jupp,
remembering how it used to be kept up when he was in the navy, great
guns banging away at royal salutes while the small-arm men on board
fired a _feu de joie_, or "fire of joy," as he translated it by the aid
of Miss Conny, who happened just then to be studying French, he
determined to celebrate the anniversary as a loyal subject in similar
fashion at the vicarage, with the aid of a couple of toy