"You _are_ lucky! I expect you'll have a lovely supper--not rice mould," bitterly.
"Rather!" said William with an air of superiority.
"What are you going to have to eat at your party?"
The little girl next door clasped her hands.
"Oh, just think of it! Your eating cream blanc-mange and me eating--_rice-mould_!" (It is impossible to convey in print the intense scorn and hatred which the little girl next door could compress into the two syllables.)
"Well, now," magnanimously, "if you'll be in your summer-house at half-past, I'll bring you some cream blanc-mange. Truly I will!"
The little girl's face beamed with pleasure.
"Will you? Will you _really_? You won't forget?"
"Not me! I'll be there. I'll slip away from our show on the quiet with it."
"Oh, how _lovely_! I'll be thinking of it every minute. Don't forget. Good-bye!"
She blew him a kiss and flitted daintily into the house.
William blushed furiously at the blown kiss and descended from his precarious perch.
He went to the library where his grown-up sister Ethel and his elder brother Robert were standing on ladders at opposite ends of the room, engaged in hanging up festoons of ivy and holly across the wall. There was to be dancing in the library after supper. William's mother watched them from a safe position on the floor.
[Illustration: "IF YOU'LL BE IN YOUR SUMMER-HOUSE AT HALF-PAST, I'LL BRING YOU SOME CREAM BLANC-MANGE. TRULY I WILL!" SAID WILLIAM.]
"Look here, mother," began William. "Am I or am I not coming to the party to-night?"
"For goodness' sake, William, don't open that discussion again. For the tenth time to-day, you are _not_!"
"But _why_ not?" he persisted. "I only want to know why not. That's all I want to know. It looks a bit funny, doesn't it, to give a party and leave out your only son, at least,"--with a glance at Robert, and a slight concession to accuracy--"to leave out one of your only two sons? It looks a bit queer, surely. That's all I'm thinking of--how it will look."
"Yes, that's better," said William's mother.
"It's a _young_ folks' party," went on William, warming to his subject. "I heard you tell Aunt Jane it was a _young_ folks' party. Well, I'm young, aren't I? I'm eleven. Do you want me any younger? You aren't ashamed of folks seeing me, are you! I'm not deformed or anything."