and as seven o'clock struck, there was a transformation scene.
With conscientious punctuality the party-dressed children
turned, into little or big woolen bundles, as the case might be.
The last bundle I saw was a pink woolen one, weeping bitterly. My
heart was wrung. The noisy crying of a child is bad enough, but
when it is the soft weeping of a broken heart, it is unbearable.
Of course it was my friend Thomas. I stood on the staircase
unable to do anything, for he was quickly borne from the arms of
Fraulein by a big footman, and no doubt deposited in a brougham in
the outer darkness. Poor Thomas!

I hoped that the right sort of mother would be at home to unroll
that pink bundle, a mother who would pretend that it could not be
her darling who was crying, but a strange little boy with a face
quite unknown to her. Where could he have come from? And so on,
until Thomas would be ashamed to be seen with a strange face, and
would smile, and then his mother would say, "What is it, my
darling?" because, of course, it was her own darling who was
crying, and she would never rest till she knew why.

I went back to the drawing-room quite happy that Thomas should be
unrolled by the right sort of mother, and as I walked across the
room, my foot slipped on something. I looked to see what it was I
had trodden on. It was a short screw, Thomas's precious
possession. "That was why the poor pink bundle was crying!"

"Hyacinth," I said, "who was Thomas?"

"Which one? There was little Thomas and the Thomas who lives a
long way off, and then just plain Thomas."