"One lump or two?" queried Prissy again, graciously transferring her attentions to Joe Craig.
"Eh, what?" ejaculated that warrior. Prissy repeated her question.
So one by one the brigands were served, and the subdued look which rests upon a Sunday-school picnic at the hour of refreshment settled down upon them. The Smoutchy boy is bad and bold, but he does not like you to see him in the act of eating. His instinct is to get behind a wall, or into the thick of a copse and do it there. A similar feeling sends the sparrow with a larger crumb than the others into the seclusion of his nest among the ivy.
Nevertheless the bread and jam, the raisins, and the sheep's-head-pie disappeared 'like snow off a dyke.' The wonder of the thimbleful cups, continually replenished, grew more and more surprising; and, winking slyly at each other the Smoutchies passed them in with a touch of their caps to be filled and refilled again and again. Prissy kept the kettle beside her, out of which she poured the water brought by Timothy Tracy as she wanted it. The golden colour of the tea degenerated, but so long as a few drops of milk remained to mask the fraud from their eyes, the Smoutchies drank the warm water with equal relish.
"Besides it's so much better for your nerves, you know!" said Prissy, putting her action upon a hygienic basis.
At first the boys had been inclined to snatch the viands from the table-cloth, and there was one footprint on the further edge. But the iron hand of Nipper Donnan knocked two or three intruders sprawling, and after that the eatables were distributed as patiently and exactly as at a Lord Mayor's banquet.
"Please will you let that boy get up?--I think he must have been sat upon quite long enough now," said Prissy, who could not bear to listen to the uneasy groaning of the oppressed prisoner.
The chief granted the boon. The sitter and his victim came in and were regaled amicably from one plate. "Pieces" and full cups of tea were despatched to the distant sentinels, and finally the whole company was in the midst of washing up, when Prissy, who had been kneeling on the grass wiping saucers one by one, suddenly rose to her feet with a little cry.
"Oh, it is so dreadful--I _quite_ forgot!"