Olivia said it was no good making special preparations for Lalla’s and Nana’s visit on Sunday.

“And don’t look so anguished, Harriet darling. You know I always give you the nicest tea I can on Sundays.”

Harriet thought her home the loveliest place in the world, and her family the nicest family, but she did think on the Sunday morning before Lalla came that it looked shabby compared to Lalla’s home. She knew Lalla would not mind a bit what it looked like, but Nana would and Nana was the one who would count.

The boys had heard so much about Lalla that they had got tired of her. To show how tired they were they mimicked Harriet before she had a chance to say what she had done at the rink. First Alec and then Toby would ask “How’s little Lalla today?” or “What did Lalla say today?”

To mark the fact that Lalla, her grand home and her beautiful skating meant nothing to them, both Alec and Toby had meant to be out on Sunday afternoon. This would have been what is known as cutting off your nose to spite your face, for they had a great deal they wanted to do indoors on Sunday, and nothing they wanted to do outdoors. Luckily for them Sunday turned out to be the nastiest, wettest day anybody could imagine, and not even decent rain but a sort of dirty, damp sleet. So when Lalla and Nana arrived they found the whole Johnson family in the sitting room waiting to meet them.

Nana came in first. She took a quick look around. She saw that the furniture was what she called “been good once.” She saw that the taste, though not of the sort that she fancied herself, was the kind that Aunt Claudia would approve. Also she saw—and this meant far more to her than the furniture—that the Johnson boys had been brought up nicely, for they all got to their feet the moment she and Lalla came in.

Lalla, almost for the first time in her life, was silent. Coming from her big home, with so much space for everybody and so few people to talk to, Harriet’s home seemed gloriously cozy and full of people. Olivia saw what she was thinking.

“Bless you, we surprise you, don’t we? You aren’t used to a big family, are you?” Then she signaled to the boys to come over. “This is Alec, Lalla.”

Harriet did not want Lalla to get muddled about whom she was meeting, so she explained, “He’s the one who earns the two shillings for my skates. You know—I told you.”

“And this,” said Olivia, “is Toby.”

Toby blinked at Lalla through his glasses. Lalla thought, though he said “How do you do?” politely, that Toby was looking at her rather as though he wished she was not there. What Toby was really doing was wondering whether he could find out how much Lalla was costing to train, and then work out how much was spent on each cubic inch of her.

“And this,” said Olivia, “is Edward.”

Edward had been looking forward all day to Lalla’s coming; the more people there were in a room the better he liked it. He gazed at Lalla with his enormous, beautiful eyes, and Lalla and Nana, just as Edward knew they would, looked at him with the same pleased faces strangers always wore when they met him.

“I’m so glad that you’ve come to tea,” he said. “I’ve been hoping and hoping you would.”

Nana thought what a pity it was such looks should have been wasted on a boy. They would have been so useful to Harriet, poor little thing.

“That’s very nice of you, dear,” she said, “and Lalla’s been looking forward to coming, haven’t you, Lalla?”

Edward beamed at Lalla. “I’m afraid you won’t get tea here like the beautiful, beautiful tea you gave Harriet.”

Because Edward was so good-looking and so friendly Lalla might have forgotten what Aunt Claudia would say if she asked Edward to tea without permission, but Nana was never carried away by a child’s looks. She said briskly she was sure there would be a very nice tea, and in any case food wasn’t everything. Edward was disappointed; he had meant to be asked to tea with Lalla.

“Food’s a great deal,” he said, “especially when it’s a cake with pink sugar on it and chocolate biscuits.”

“I hope Harriet’s told you about Edward,” Alec said. “He’s a born cad; we do our best, but we can’t do much about him.”

“I’m not,” said Edward. “I like nice things to eat and people being nice to me. It’s much duller being someone like you who doesn’t tell anyone what he likes.”

Olivia laughed and told Edward he was an insufferable child. Then she took Nana and Lalla into her bedroom to take off their things.

At first it seemed as if the afternoon were going to be difficult. It would have been all right if only Lalla had been there, but having Nana to entertain too seemed to make it awkward. But Olivia soon arranged things so that people of different ages in a small room did not seem to matter at all. She got out some playing cards and suggested that George should play with the children. Then, while Lalla was being taught how to play Casino, she sat down beside Nana and discussed knitting.

Lalla, who was quick, soon picked up Casino and found it the most exciting game. Sometimes she and Miss Goldthorpe played Patience, and sometimes she persuaded Nana to play Snap, but otherwise she had played no card games. Certainly she had never seen a family card game, with everybody trying to do down the rest of the family, and roaring with laughter when they succeeded.

But after tea, when Nana insisted on helping Olivia and George to wash up, was the time Lalla enjoyed best. It was then that the Johnsons sprawled across the table and talked, and told her things which made her feel like part of the family. She heard all about Mr. Pulton and the paper round, and how much money there was in the money box and what it was meant to be spent on. Toby told her that in the spring, when Alec had enough money to start buying things for the shop, he was going to keep a proper profit-and-loss account book for him.

Lalla had never stopped to think where vegetables came from, or what one paid for them, but quite soon she was deep in the discussion of whether it would be better to start spending Alec’s capital on early lettuces, or wait for the peas-and-beans and strawberries period. Alec drew for her a plan of the sort of nursery garden he intended to have. And Toby got out an atlas and showed her whereabouts that nursery garden had to be so that the amount of gas used up by a truck bringing in the fruit, vegetables and flowers did not exceed what the fruit, vegetables and flowers would bring in.

“You mustn’t mind Toby,” Alec said. “He’s got a mathematical mind; he can’t help it.”

Lalla looked respectfully at Toby. “Miss Goldthorpe wishes I had. I can’t do sums at all.”

Toby thought this was a pity. So expensive an education being given to somebody and she could not do sums.

“What else do you do besides skating?” Alec asked.

Lalla was puzzled. “I do lessons.”

Toby saw she had not understood. “Alec didn’t mean that, he meant what other things do you like doing? I play chess and collect stamps, and Alec paints pictures, and he’s awfully good at games.”

Edward felt he was being neglected. “And I sing. I’m going to get a scholarship and sing in a choir school, and I’m the best at acting in the family. I was the prince in the school play, and I’m going to be another prince this Christmas.”

Alec rubbed Edward’s hair the wrong way. “Not because you can act, you little show-off.”

“It’s because of his looks,” said Toby.

His family looked sorrowfully at Edward.

“We’re worried about him,” Alec explained. “If he goes on as he is now he’s likely to turn out to be a confidence man.”

Edward had heard that before. “I needn’t. I can’t help it if people like me. They talk, and I talk back.”

Toby gave Lalla a look as if to say “You see?” Then he remembered that Lalla had not answered their question. “What else do you do but skate?”

Lalla tried to think. There were her books, but she was not what Miss Goldthorpe called “a great reader.”

“I listen to the wireless sometimes, and on Sundays, if nobody’s in, Nana and I look at television.”

Harriet saw that her brothers thought this a very poor answer. She flew to Lalla’s defense.

“She goes to Alonso Vittori for ballet, and she fences, and she wouldn’t get time for the sort of things we do.”

Toby drew a piece of paper towards him. “What time do you get up? How many hours of lessons do you do? How many hours of skating, dancing and all that?” Lalla told him. In the quickest possible time he had the answer. She had two hours of her own every weekday and almost the whole of Sunday. What did she do with those hours?

It was the first time that Lalla had heard anyone suggest that skating by itself was not enough to fill anybody’s life. She looked first at one Johnson and then at the other, and saw, to her amazement, that they did not think it was enough. They thought just doing one thing very dull indeed. Ever since she had been pushed in her carriage to the rink, Lalla, at the rink and at home, had been quite a person, and she was not used to having people look at her in a reproachful way; usually their eyes were filled with envy. Suddenly she felt a need to make Harriet’s brothers see how important she was. Without knowing it she spoke in rather an Aunt-Claudia voice:

“It’s dull doing things alone. I was never allowed a friend before I met Harriet.”

It was not only the boys who were surprised, but Harriet too, for Lalla did not sound a bit like herself.

“No friends?” said Alec. “Why?”

Toby did not believe her. “You must have some, everybody does.”

Edward beat on the table with his fists to attract attention. “I’ve simply hundreds and hundreds.”

More and more Lalla felt a need to be grand. “My Aunt Claudia didn’t know any who were suitable.”

“Suitable for what?” asked Toby.

Lalla’s face was red; she knew she was being silly but she could not stop. “For me; she thinks a skating champion—I mean somebody who’s going to be a skating champion—ought only to have friends who talk about skating.”

Toby began reckoning in his head. “How many good skaters are there at your rink? I mean of about your age?” Lalla thought there might be ten, fairly good but not as good as she was.

Toby wrote the figure ten on a piece of paper. Then he put down the number of towns in England. Then he guessed the number of rinks per town. Then he gave each rink ten promising pupils. “It’s impossible to get a true figure, but if I were you I’d tell your aunt that your chances of becoming a champion skater are much less than one in a thousand.” He could see that Lalla did not know what he was talking about. “I mean if there were a thousand girls in a row, all skating about as well as you do, and about the same age, it’s unlikely any one of them would be a champion skater.”

Lalla lost her temper. “You’re very rude. I’m going to be a world champion. Everybody knows it. You see, my father was.”

Toby was about to explain that he wasn’t being rude, but that her facts were wrong and he thought she ought to know.

Alec stopped him. “Shut up. If Lalla isn’t a champion skater she ought to be, seeing how many people are trying to make her one.”

“And you’ve never seen her skate,” said Harriet. “She skates gorgeously, everybody says so.”

Alec saw that they had upset Lalla. He thought it was pretty silly to think you were going to be a champion before you were, but he supposed you got like that if you had as many people fawning over you as Lalla had. All the same she was Harriet’s friend and their guest, so he tried to change the subject.

“All Toby meant was that it seemed pretty miserable to have nothing else to do except skate. I mean you can’t skate at home in the evenings, and we meant what do you do then? Before Harriet was ill she collected things. And she’s always making things, aren’t you, Harriet?”

Lalla felt that none of them liked her as much as they had, and she was sorry. She did not want to leave with the boys despising her, but the truth was that there was not much she could say; outside skating there was nothing she could think of that she did do. She had a garden, and the boys would have been interested in that, but they would despise the way she looked after it. However, a garden was better than nothing. She mentioned it cautiously. As she had supposed, Alec and Toby were interested at once. They wanted to know how big it was and what she grew in it. Lalla saw it was no good pretending so she told the truth.

“It’s a piece of a side border, the end bit. I’ve got all the proper things for it, a fork, a trowel, a rake and a watercan and wheelbarrow. I used to plant seeds and things; once I made my name in flowers, but Nana stopped helping me. She doesn’t like gardening—she hates bending—and she doesn’t like getting earth on her hands. It’s dull doing a garden alone, so I don’t.”

“Then what happens to it?” asked Toby.

“It’s still mine, but the gardener does it. It really looks like the rest of the garden, but as it’s mine I can pick the flowers in it.”

Alec thought having a bit of garden was the nicest thing that could happen to anybody. “Do you mean to say you don’t plant anything ever?”

Lalla was by now completely honest with them.

“No. You try digging and digging by yourself. It’s awfully dull. Besides, neither Miss Goldthorpe nor Nana really care what flowers come up.” Then suddenly, looking at Alec, Lalla had an idea. “Alec, why shouldn’t you grow things in my garden?”

Slowly, in the way the best ideas behave, Lalla’s idea took possession of them all. It was not decided that Sunday afternoon exactly what Alec would grow in Lalla’s garden. What was decided was that it should be made use of, and that one Sunday when Aunt Claudia was out Alec and Toby would come round and look at it, and decide what to plant in the spring.

Almost at once a fierce argument went on between Toby and Alec. Alec wanted to try forced lettuces, but Toby, putting down figures and adding them up, tried to make him see that lettuces were out of the question because they had to be grown under glass. An enormous number of them would have to be grown to pay for the glass and, as Toby pointed out, Lalla’s garden was only a piece at the end of a border and not a field. He said:

“We’ll have to measure the ground before we can tell how the space can be most economically used.”

As Toby said that Lalla thought of her garden. What a surprise it was going to be to the gardener when, instead of the magnificent flowers he grew or the candytuft and the nasturtiums that she had grown, he saw tomatoes and cucumbers coming up. He would be so surprised he would be almost certain to talk about it. Lalla warned:

“Don’t say anything to Nana yet. She’ll have to know, of course. It’s better to tell her things slowly. She doesn’t like me to do anything unless Aunt Claudia says I may.”

Alec had got up and was walking up and down in the room. In his mind Lalla’s garden was growing larger and larger, with splendid rows of green peas, and string beans, and even new potatoes. He was brought back from the new potatoes by Harriet’s pulling his sleeve. She pulled him down and whispered in his ear. When she had finished he was laughing.

“Harriet thinks that Lalla’s garden is a family secret, so we ought to make our pledge over it; and as Lalla’s a part of it she ought to make the pledge too.”

Harriet danced across to Lalla. “We’ve always done it; it’s to do with our Uncle William. The one who eats the things Daddy would like to sell in the shop.” She linked her little finger through Lalla’s. “You stand on her other side, Alec, and show her what we do.”

Alec linked his little finger through Lalla’s.

“It’s a family thing but we’ve always done it. I speak the pledge, and then you say with the others ‘Guzzle guzzle guzzle, quack quack quack,’ and as you say it we lift our hands above our heads, linked together like this.” Lalla felt honored; she had no idea what a pledge was, but she was glad she was being allowed to make it. Alec spoke in a solemn, growly voice. “We Johnsons and Lalla swear on the stomach of our uncle never to divulge what has taken place today.” They lifted their hands, and all said solemnly:

“Guzzle guzzle guzzle, quack quack quack.”

“That guzzle part,” said Alec, as they broke away and came back to the table, “is the most secret family secret. Dad doesn’t know that we know that our Uncle William was called ‘Guzzle’ at school.”

“When we found out,” Toby explained, “it was the beginning of a secret society—it had to be. That’s when we made up the pledge.”

“When anything important’s going on like your garden,” said Harriet, “we make our pledge.”

Alec patted his front. “We vow on our uncle’s stomach because it’s probably the best filled, and therefore the most important stomach we know.”

Harriet looked proudly at Lalla. “And nobody ever, except the Johnsons, made that vow before, so it almost makes you one of the family.”

Edward rubbed his cheek against Lalla’s sleeve. “I shall like you being one of the family.”

Alec gave him a shove. “Shut up, sloppy. As a matter of fact you’ve a right to share the vow, Lalla, because your garden’s going to be a very family thing. It’s not only going to pay for Harriet’s skates, but it’s going to be the foundation of the fortunes of the house of Johnson.”

Driving home, Nana thought Lalla looked solemn. “Enjoyed yourself, dearie?”

Lalla wished she could confide in Nana. She would have liked to tell her that the Johnsons were not very impressed by her being a champion skater, that Toby did not think she would be one; but Nana would be shocked, because that was just the kind of thing Aunt Claudia did not want anyone to say. Lalla would have loved also to tell Nana about the garden, but that would have to wait. Nana would not approve of Alec’s and Toby’s coming to look at it when Aunt Claudia was out. But Lalla could answer about the afternoon.

“It’s been simply gorgeous. Oh giggerty-geggerty, it was the nicest Sunday I’ve ever, ever had.”