The old lady at the post-office was standing on her doorstep. The children said “Good morning,” politely, as they passed.
“Here, stop a bit,” she said.
So they stopped.
“Those roses,” said she.
“Did you like them?” said Phyllis; “they were as fresh as fresh. I made the needle-book, but it was Bobbie’s present.” She skipped joyously as she spoke.
“Here’s your basket,” said the Post-office woman. She went in and brought out the basket. It was full of fat, red gooseberries.
“I dare say Perks’s children would like them,” said she.
“You are an old dear,” said Phyllis, throwing her arms around the old lady’s fat waist. “Perks will be pleased.”
“He won’t be half so pleased as I was with your needle-book and the tie and the pretty flowers and all,” said the old lady, patting Phyllis’s shoulder. “You’re good little souls, that you are. Look here. I’ve got a pram round the back in the wood-lodge. It was got for my Emmie’s first, that didn’t live but six months, and she never had but that one. I’d like Mrs. Perks to have it. It ’ud be a help to her with that great boy of hers. Will you take it along?”
“Oh!” said all the children together.
When Mrs. Ransome had got out the perambulator and taken off the careful papers that covered it, and dusted it all over, she said:—
“Well, there it is. I don’t know but what I’d have given it to her before if I’d thought of it. Only I didn’t quite know if she’d accept of it from me. You tell her it was my Emmie’s little one’s pram—”
“Oh, isn’t it nice to think there is going to be a real live baby in it again!”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Ransome, sighing, and then laughing; “here, I’ll give you some peppermint cushions for the little ones, and then you run along before I give you the roof off my head and the clothes off my back.”
All the things that had been collected for Perks were packed into the perambulator, and at half-past three Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis wheeled it down to the little yellow house where Perks lived.
The house was very tidy. On the window ledge was a jug of wildflowers, big daisies, and red sorrel, and feathery, flowery grasses.
There was a sound of splashing from the washhouse, and a partly washed boy put his head round the door.
“Mother’s a-changing of herself,” he said.
“Down in a minute,” a voice sounded down the narrow, freshly scrubbed stairs.
The children waited. Next moment the stairs creaked and Mrs. Perks came down, buttoning her bodice. Her hair was brushed very smooth and tight, and her face shone with soap and water.
“I’m a bit late changing, Miss,” she said to Bobbie, “owing to me having had a extry cleanup today, along o’ Perks happening to name its being his birthday. I don’t know what put it into his head to think of such a thing. We keeps the children’s birthdays, of course; but him and me—we’re too old for suchlike, as a general rule.”
“We knew it was his birthday,” said Peter, “and we’ve got some presents for him outside in the perambulator.”
As the presents were being unpacked, Mrs. Perks gasped. When they were all unpacked, she surprised and horrified the children by sitting suddenly down on a wooden chair and bursting into tears.
“Oh, don’t!” said everybody; “Oh, please don’t!” And Peter added, perhaps a little impatiently: “What on earth is the matter? You don’t mean to say you don’t like it?”
Mrs. Perks only sobbed. The Perks children, now as shiny-faced as anyone could wish, stood at the washhouse 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 wildflowers 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
