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  “Good morning, ladies. It’s a warm day today.”

  “Yes, it is,” agreed Milly-Molly-Mandy and little-friend-Susan. (They were feeling very warm indeed, though it wasn’t at all sunny out.)

  “Visitors in these parts, I take it,” said the blacksmith.

  “Yes, we are,” agreed Milly-Molly-Mandy and little-friend-Susan.

  Then Milly-Molly-Mandy said: “Can you tell us if there is a good grocer’s shop anywhere round here?”

  “Let me see, now,” said the blacksmith, thinking hard. “Yes, I believe there is. Try going to the end of this lane, here, and turn sharp right – very sharp, mind. Then look both ways at once, and cross the road. You’ll maybe see one.”

  Then he took his iron out, all red-hot, and began hammering at it again to shape it.

  Milly-Molly-Mandy and little-friend-Susan couldn’t be quite sure whether Mr Rudge knew them or not. They were just thinking of going on when – WHO should come round the corner of Mr Blunt’s corn-shop but Billy Blunt himself!

  Billy Blunt noticed the two rather odd-looking ladies standing in front of the forge. And he noticed one of them pull the other’s sleeve, which came right down over her hand. And then they both turned and walked up the lane.

  He thought they looked a bit queer somehow – short and rather crumpled. So he stopped at the forge and asked the blacksmith:

  “Who are those two?”

  “Lady-friends of mine,” said the blacksmith, turning the iron and getting hold of it in a different place. “Lady-friends. Known ’em for years.”

  Billy Blunt waited, but the blacksmith didn’t say anything more. So he began strolling up the lane after the two ladies, who were near the stile by now.

  The lady in the mackintosh seemed to be a bit flustered, whispering to the other. Then the other one said (so that he could hear):

  “I seem to have lost my shopping-list, it isn’t in my basket. Have you got it, dear?”

  Billy Blunt strolled nearer. He wanted to see their faces.

  “No, I haven’t got it,” said the first one. “We’d better go home and look for it. Oh, dear, I think it’s coming on to rain. I felt a little spit. I must put up my umbrella.”

  And she opened it and held it over them both, so that Billy Blunt couldn’t see so much of them.

  He strolled a bit nearer, and stopped to pick an unripe blackberry from the hedge and put it in his mouth. He wanted to see the ladies climb over the stile.

  But they waited there, rummaging in their basket and talking of the rain. Billy Blunt couldn’t feel any rain. Presently he heard the lady with the basket say in a rather pointed way:

  “I wonder what that little boy thinks he’s doing there? He ought to go home.”

  And, quite suddenly, that’s what the “little boy” did. At any rate he hurried off down the lane and out of sight.

  Then Milly-Molly-Mandy and little-friend-Susan, very relieved, picked up their skirts and scrambled over the stile, and set off back across the fields. There was nobody to see them now but the cows, so they ran, laughing and giggling and tumbling against each other among the buttercups all the way across.

  And by the time they got back to the first stile, just opposite the nice white cottage with the thatched roof (where Milly-Molly-Mandy lived), you never saw such a funny-looking pair of ladies!

  Little-friend-Susan’s hat-trimming had come off, and Milly-Molly-Mandy had stepped right out of her rag-bag skirt after it had tripped her up three times, and they were both so out of breath with giggling that they could hardly climb over on to the road.

  But the moment they landed on the other side somebody jumped out at them from the hedge. And WHO do you suppose it was?

  Yes, of course! It was Billy Blunt.

  He had run all the way round by the road, just for the fun of facing them as they came across that stile.

  “Huh! Think I didn’t know you?” he asked, breathing hard. “I knew you at once.”

  “Then why didn’t you speak to us?” asked little-friend-Susan.

  “Think I’d want to speak to either of you looking like that?” said Billy Blunt, grinning.

  “I don’t believe you did know us, not just at once,” said Milly-Molly-Mandy, “or you’d have said something, even if it was rude!”

  “Look!” said little-friend-Susan. “There’s someone coming. Let’s go in quick!”

  So they scurried across the road and through the garden gate. And just then Milly-Molly-Mandy’s mother came out to pick a handful of flowers for the table.

  “Well, goodness me!” said Mother. “Whatever’s all this?”

  “We were just dressing up,” said Milly-Molly-Mandy, “when you wanted us to go to the village.”

  “And we dared each other to go like this,” said little-friend-Susan.

  “I saw the two guys talking to the blacksmith,” said Billy Blunt.

  “Anyhow,” said Milly-Molly-Mandy, hopping on each leg in turn, her rag-bag hat-trimming looping over one eye, “we did dare, didn’t we, Susan?”

  “Well, well!” said Mother. “And where’s my tin of treacle?”

  Milly-Molly-Mandy stopped.

  “We forgot all about it! I’m sorry, Mother. We’ll go now!”

  “Not like that!” said Mother. “You take my coat off, and go in and tidy yourselves first. And the attic too.”

  “I’ll run and get the treacle for you,” said Billy Blunt. “ ’Spect I stopped ’em – they’d got almost as far as the grocer’s, anyhow.”

  “Yes, he scared us!” said Milly-Molly-Mandy, handing him Mother’s money out of the basket. “He followed us along and never said a word. He thought we were proper ladies, that’s why!”

  “Thought you were proper guys,” said Billy Blunt, going out of the gate.

  10

  Milly-Molly-Mandy and the Golden Wedding

  Once upon a time Milly-Molly-Mandy was busy dipping fingers of bread-and-butter into her boiled egg at supper-time, and listening while Father and Mother and Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle and Aunty talked.

  They were counting how long it was that Grandpa and Grandma had been married. And it was a very long time indeed – nearly fifty years!

  Grandma said: “Our Golden Wedding – next month!”

  Milly-Molly-Mandy was very interested, though she did not know what a Golden Wedding was. But it sounded rather grand.

  “Do you have to be married all over again when you’ve been married fifty years?” she asked.

  “No,” said Mother; “it’s more like having a very special sort of birthday. When you’ve been married twenty-five years you have a Silver Wedding Day, and people give you silver presents. But when you’ve been married fifty years it’s a Golden one. We shall have to think what we can do to celebrate Grandpa’s and Grandma’s Golden Wedding Day. Dear me!”

  Milly-Molly-Mandy whispered: “Do we have to give golden presents to Grandpa and Grandma?”

  Mother whispered back: “We shall have to think what we can do about it, Milly-Molly-Mandy. But there are different sorts of gold, you know – sunshine and buttercups and, well, little girls, even, can be good as gold sometimes! We shall have to think.”

  Grandpa (eating his kipper) heard their whisperings, and said: “If Milly-Molly-Mandy promises to be as good as gold that day you can just wrap her up in tissue-paper and hand her over. She’ll do for a Golden Wedding present!”

  But Milly-Molly-Mandy wouldn’t promise to be as good as all that!

  She did wonder, though, what sort of gold presents Father and Mother and Uncle and Aunty would be giving to Grandpa and Grandma. And she wondered too, very much, what sort of a gold present she herself could give. It was important to think of something very special for such a special occasion.

  She talked with little-friend-Susan and Billy Blunt about it before school next morning.

  Little-friend-Susan said: “I’d like to give a present too. But I haven’t enough money.”

  Billy Blunt said: �
�I’d be rich if I could give anybody a gold present!”

  “But it doesn’t always have to be that sort of present,” Milly-Molly-Mandy told them. “There’s good-as-gold, if we could think of something like that. Only I can’t think what.”

  And then they met others on their way in to school, and had other things to think about.

  A few days later Billy Blunt showed Milly-Molly-Mandy a crumpled bit of newspaper he had in his pocket, and made her read it. It was something about a golden-jubilee concert somewhere. Milly-Molly-Mandy couldn’t think why Billy Blunt bothered to keep it.

  “Plain as your nose,” said Billy Blunt. “Golden jubilee means fifty years, like your Golden Wedding business. They’re having a concert to celebrate. Thought you might be interested.”

  And then, suddenly, Milly-Molly-Mandy was very interested.

  “You mean we might do something like that for Grandpa and Grandma? Oh, Billy! what a good idea. What can we do?”

  But Billy Blunt only said: “Oh, it was just an idea.”

  And he went off to exchange foreign stamps with a friend of his, Timmy Biggs, So Milly-Molly-Mandy looked for little-friend-Susan to tell her.

  “But what could we do for a concert?” asked little-friend-Susan. “We can’t play or anything.”

  But Milly-Molly-Mandy said (like Mother): “We shall have to think, Susan!”

  The Golden Wedding meant a lot of thinking for everybody – Father and Mother and Uncle and Aunty as well.

  Mother had the first idea. She said (while Grandpa and Grandma were out of the way):

  “I shall make a big golden wedding-cake, iced with yellow icing, and trimmed with gold hearts and a gold paper frill. We’ll have a Golden Wedding tea-party!”

  Father and Uncle and Aunty and Milly-Molly-Mandy thought that was a grand idea!

  After school next morning Milly-Molly-Mandy and little-friend-Susan and Billy Blunt looked in Miss Muggins’s shop window to see if there was anything interesting there besides socks and dusters and underclothes.

  “There’s a little gold bell with a handle on that shelf – see,” said Milly-Molly-Mandy, “and pins with gold heads.”

  “Those yellow pencils with gold tops look quite cheap,” said little-friend-Susan, “and that Happy Returns card with gold print!”

  (Really, there seemed quite a number of gold things if you kept your eyes open!)

  Billy Blunt looked carefully, but said nothing.

  “Have you thought what you can do at the concert?” Milly-Molly-Mandy asked him.

  “What concert?” said Billy Blunt.

  “Our Golden Wedding concert, of course!” said Milly-Molly-Mandy.

  “Huh!” said Billy Blunt. And then he said: “Better call a meeting and make plans.”

  “Ooh, yes let’s!” said Milly-Molly-Mandy and little-friend-Susan together. And Milly-Molly-Mandy added, “Somewhere secret, where Grandpa and Grandma won’t know!”

  Billy Blunt said they might come to his place after tea on Saturday; his folk would be in the corn-shop, and they could plan in private there.

  So directly after tea on Saturday Milly-Molly-Mandy met little-friend-Susan at the Moggs’s gate, and they ran together down to the village, and through the gate at the side of the corn-shop, and up the garden path into the Blunts’s house.

  “Oh, it’s you,” said Billy Blunt (as if he wasn’t expecting them).

  Milly-Molly-Mandy hadn’t seen inside the Blunts’s sitting-room before, only in the corn-shop. It was small and rather dark, but very cosy, with a thick red cloth on the table.

  “Sit down,” said Billy Blunt. “The meeting’s begun. I’m President, as it’s my house.”

  “But it’s my Golden Wedding,” Milly-Molly-Mandy told him.

  They laughed at that (because Milly-Molly-Mandy didn’t look over fifty), and then they felt more at home.

  Billy Blunt thumped on the table, and said, “Order, now!”

  And they settled down to thinking what they could do about a concert.

  They couldn’t play the piano, though there was one which Aunty played on at the nice white cottage with the thatched roof (where, of course, Milly-Molly-Mandy lived). Billy Blunt had an old mouth-organ, but it was broken. And little-friend-Susan had a dulcimer, but her baby sister played with it and half the notes were gone.

  “Then we’ll have to make up things,” said Milly-Molly-Mandy. “I can play a comb and tissue-paper!”

  “Saucepan lids make awfully nice clappers,” said little-friend-Susan.

  Billy Blunt reached down and picked up the shovel and poker from the fireplace and started hitting them together, till Milly-Molly-Mandy and little-friend-Susan shouted at him that Grandpa and Grandma wouldn’t like that one bit! So then he put the shovel to his shoulder and sawed up and down it with the poker, singing, “Tweedle-tweedle-tweedle,” exactly as if he were playing the violin!

  Milly-Molly-Mandy and little-friend-Susan did wish they had thought of that first!

  “Well!” said Milly-Molly-Mandy. “We can have a band, and then we’ll recite something. What can we say?”

  “Let’s write a poem,” said little-friend-Susan.

  So they thought awhile. And then Milly-Molly-Mandy said:

  “Dear Grandpa and Grandma, we want to say

  We wish you a happy Golden Wedding Day!”

  “Bit long,” said Billy Blunt.

  “But it rhymes,” said Milly-Molly-Mandy.

  “Yes, it does,” said little-friend-Susan. “Can’t we get in something about Many Happy Returns?”

  “Can you have returns of Golden Weddings?” asked Milly-Molly-Mandy. “I thought you only had one.”

  “You could have one every fifty years, I expect,” said Billy Blunt. “You’d be a bit old by next time, though!”

  “Well, we’d like Grandpa and Grandma to have heaps of Golden Weddings, till they were millions of years old!” said Milly-Molly-Mandy. So they thought again, and added:

  “We want you to know our heart all burns

  To wish you Many Happy Returns.”

  Billy Blunt wrote it down on a piece of paper, and while the others tried to think up some more he went on scribbling for a bit. Then he read out loudly:

  “We hope you like this little stunt,

  Done by Mister William Blunt!”

  There was a lot of shouting at that, as the others, of course, wanted to have their names in too! They made so much noise that Mrs Blunt looked in from the corn-shop to see what was up.

  Billy Blunt said: “Sorry, Mum!” And they went on with the meeting in whispers.

  Well, the great day arrived.

  Only a few special people were invited to the party, but there seemed quite a crowd – Grandpa and Grandma, Father and Mother, Uncle and Aunty, Mr Moggs and Mrs Moggs (their nearest neighbours), little-friend-Susan and Baby Moggs (who couldn’t be left behind), Billy Blunt (by special request), and, of course, Milly-Molly-Mandy.

  Mother and Aunty between them had prepared a splendid tea, with the big decorated Golden Wedding cake in the centre, and buttered scones, and brown and white bread-and-butter and honey, and apricot jam, and lemon-curd tarts, and orange buns (everything as nearly golden-coloured as possible, of course) arranged round it.

  MOTHER AND AUNTY BETWEEN THEM HAD PREPARED A SPLENDID TEA

  But before Mother filled the teapot everybody had to give Grandpa and Grandma their golden presents. (Milly-Molly-Mandy and little-friend-Susan and Billy Blunt were all very interested to see what everyone was giving!)

  Well, Mr and Mrs Moggs gave a beautiful gilt basket tied with gold ribbons, full of lovely yellow chrysanthemums.

  Father and Mother gave a pair of real gold cufflinks to Grandpa, and a little gold locket (with a photo of Milly-Molly-Mandy inside) to Grandma.

  Uncle and Aunty gave a gold coin to hang on Grandpa’s watch-chain, and a thin gold neck-chain for Grandma’s locket.

  And then it was time for Milly-Molly-Mandy and little-friend-Susan an
d Billy Blunt to give their presents.

  They stood in a row, and Billy Blunt lifted his shovel-and-poker violin, and Milly-Molly-Mandy her comb-and-tissue-paper mouth-organ, and little-friend-Susan her saucepan-lid clappers; and they played and sang, hummed and clashed, Happy Birthday to you! only instead of “birthday” they sang, “Happy Golden Wedding to you!”

  And then they shouted their own poem all together:

  “Dear Grandpa and Grandma, we want to say

  We wish you a happy Golden Wedding Day.

  We want you to know our heart all burns

  To wish you Many Happy Returns.

  We hope you like our little stunt,

  From Milly-Molly-Mandy, Susan,

  and Billy Blunt!”

  Grandpa and Grandma were nearly overcome, and everybody clapped as the three gave their presents then: two long yellow pencils with brass ends (which looked like gold) from little-friend-Susan; two “Golden-Glamour Sachets” from Billy Blunt; and a little gold bell to ring whenever they wanted her from Milly-Molly-Mandy.

  Grandpa and Grandma WERE pleased!

  There was quite a bit of talk over Billy Blunt’s sachets, though, as he had thought they were scent sachets, but the others said they were shampoos for golden hair, and, of course Grandpa’s and Grandma’s hair was white!

  However, Grandma said her sachet smelled so delicious she would keep it among her handkerchiefs, and Grandpa could do the same with his. So that was all right.

  Then they had tea, and Grandpa and Grandma cut big slices of their Golden Wedding cake, with a shiny gilt heart for everybody.

  Afterwards Grandpa made quite a long speech. But all Grandma could say was that she thought such a lovely Golden Wedding was well worth waiting fifty years for!

  So then Milly-Molly-Mandy and little-friend-Susan and Billy Blunt knew they had really and truly helped in making it such a splendid occasion!