shone in the light reflected from the spotlessly white table cloth. In
the centre stood the Christmas layer cake, its body four inches thick
and its top glistening with red and yellow and green pieces of
candied fruit.

Then began the little comedy regularly enacted every Christmas.

"Isn't Granny coming," the father asked. Then he turned to Lena. "Tell
her we are ready."

"She says she doesn't want to come in," Lena reported after a hasty
visit to the kitchen.

"You go and ask her for me, Keith," was the father's next suggestion.

"Thank you, dear," Granny said when Keith came to her with his message.
"But you tell your father that I think the kitchen is a much better
place for a useless old hag like myself."

"Suppose you go," the father said to his wife on hearing Keith's
modified version of Granny's reply.

"She says she really won't come in," the mother explained a minute
later. "You had better go out and ask her yourself, Carl. It is the one
thing she cannot resist."

The father went with a broad grin on his face. Keith laughed loudly and
nervously, his eyes on the huge cake. But the mother said
apologetically to Lena: