THE GREAT FEAST
[26]
NCE the Play Angel came into a nursery where four little
children sat on the floor with sad and troubled faces.
"What is the matter,
dears?" asked the Play Angel.
"We wanted to have a grand
feast!" said the child whose nursery it was.
"Yes, that would be delightful!" said the Play
Angel.
"But there is only one cooky!" said the child whose
nursery it was.
"And it is a very small cooky!" said the child who was
a cousin, and therefore felt a right to speak.
"Not big enough for myself!" said the child whose nursery
it was.
The other two children said nothing, because they were not
relations; but they
[27] looked at the cooky with large eyes, and their mouths went
up in the middle and down at the sides.
"Well," said the Play Angel, "suppose we have the feast
just the same! I think we can manage it."
She broke the cooky into four pieces, and gave one piece to
the littlest child.
"See!" she said. "This
is a roast chicken, a Brown Bantam. It is just
as brown and crispy as it can be, and there is cranberry
sauce on one side, and on the other a little mountain of
mashed potato; it must be a volcano, it smokes so. Do you
see?"
"Yes!" said the littlest one; and his
mouth went down in the middle and up at the corners.
The Play Angel gave a piece to the next child.
"Here," she said, "is a little pie! Outside, as you
see, it is brown and crusty, with a wreath of pastry leaves
round the edge and 'For You' in the middle; but inside it
is all chicken and ham and jelly and hard-boiled eggs. Did
ever you see such a pie?"
[28] "Never I did!" said the child.
"Now here," said the Angel to the third child, "is a round
cake. Look at it! the frosting is half an inch thick, with
candied rose-leaves and angelica laid on in true-lovers'
knots; and inside there are chopped-up almonds, and raisins,
and great slices of citron. It is the prettiest cake I ever
saw, and the best."
"So it is I did!" said the third child.
Then the Angel
gave the last piece to the child whose nursery it was.
"My dear!" she said. "Just look! Here is an ice-cream
rabbit. He is snow-while outside, with eyes of red barley
sugar; see his ears, and his little snubby tail! but inside,
I think you will find him pink.
Now, when I clap my hands
and count one, two, three, you must eat the feast all up.
One—two—three!"
So the children ate the feast all up.
"There!" said the
Angel. "Did ever you see such a grand feast?"
"No, never we did!" said all the four children together.
"And there are some crumbs left over,"
[29] said the Angel. "Come, and we will give them to the brother
birds!"
"But you
didn't
have any!" said the child whose
nursery it was.
"Oh, yes!" said the Angel. "I had it all!"
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