we'll have a party."

A bell in the distance warned the children that it was time to go in
and tidy up for tea. Grizzel, however, was far too much enthralled
by the little house to want to come down so soon. "I don't want any
bread-and-butter tea," she announced; "bring me three oranges and
eleven biscuits, and the _Swiss Family Robinson_, and let me stay up
here."

Tea was laid in the dining-room, where they found Baby already
seated in her high chair. She was a very pretty baby, with large
dark eyes, silky golden hair, and a dear little mouth parting over
two rows of tiny pearly teeth. She gurgled melodiously to her family
in the intervals of dropping bits of jammy bread into her mug of
milk, and watching them bob about with absorbed interest.

"Good old Mary! She's made potato scones _and_ almond gingerbread."
Hugh remarked approvingly. "If you've never tasted real Irish potato
scones baked on a girdle, Mollie, you'd better chalk it up, as
Bridget says. You split them in two, pop in a lump of butter, shut
them up, and eat them. Too soon they are but a sweet dream of the
past."

"They'll soon be a horrid dream of the future if you gobble them
like that," Prudence said warningly, "and you've forgotten Grizzel's
oranges; go and pull three fresh ones, and we'd better send her
ginger cake."

The gingerbread was baked in thin oblong squares frosted with white
sugar, each child's name being written on its own cake in pink