They had breakfast extra early, which some children I know, would not,
I fear, consider a treat. Indeed, I once heard of some young people,
scarcely to be called children, and by no means overworked young people
either, who chose for a holiday pleasure that they should stay in bed
for breakfast, and not get up till the middle of the day, which, I must
say, I did not at all admire. The great reason for the extra early
breakfast on Biddy's birthday was not that the Vane children were so
_very_ fond of being up betimes, but that Rough wanted to be there at
the great scene, and with some difficulty he had got an hour's 'grace'
from school that morning.

To begin at the beginning--for I know that when I was a child I liked to
be told all about everything--the first pleasure of the day, after the
reading of papa's nice letter, was the sight of the breakfast-table.
Kind Miss Millet and Alie had dressed it up with cowslips after Biddy
had gone to bed the night before, for there were cowslips, and very
pretty ones, to be had in some woods a mile or two inland from Seacove.
And May birthdays always make one think of cowslips.

The breakfast itself was very nice too--extra nice; for there was no
bread and milk for once, but only 'grown-up' things--a tempting dish of
ham and eggs, and delicious hot rolls and tea-cakes, and strawberry jam
and honey to eat with them as a finish up. And besides the letter from
papa--which had _really_ come the day before and been kept till this
morning, as, in his fear of being too late, Mr. Vane had sent it off
rather too soon--there was a neat little packet for Biddy from
grandmamma, containing a story-book called _The Christmas Stocking_, and
a lovely scarf worked in all kinds of marvellous Eastern colours,
'making one think of the Arabian nights,' as Alie said, from the Indian