Of course it had to occur on a Thursday afternoon.  The season was summer, suitable for pale and fragile toilettes.  And the eight children who sat round Aunt Harriet’s great table glittered like the sun.  Not Constance’s specially provided napkins could hide that wealth and profusion of white lace and stitchery.  Never in after-life are the genteel children of the Five Towns so richly clad as at the age of four or five years.  Weeks of labour, thousands of cubic feet of gas, whole nights stolen from repose, eyesight, and general health, will disappear into the manufacture of a single frock that accidental jam may ruin in ten seconds.  Thus it was in those old days; and thus it is to-day.  Cyril’s guests ranged in years from four to six; they were chiefly older than their host; this was a pity, it impaired his importance; but up to four years a child’s sense of propriety, even of common decency, is altogether too unreliable for a respectable party.

Round about the outskirts of the table were the elders, ladies the majority; they also in their best, for they had to meet each other.  Constance displayed a new dress, of crimson silk; after having mourned for her mother she had definitely abandoned the black which, by reason of her duties in the shop, she had constantly worn from the age of sixteen to within a few months of Cyril’s birth; she never went into the shop now, except casually, on brief visits of inspection.  She was still fat; the destroyer of her figure sat at the head of the table.  Samuel kept close to her; he was the only male, until Mr. Critchlow astonishingly arrived; among the company Mr. Critchlow had a grand-niece.  Samuel, if not in his best, was certainly not in his everyday suit.  With his large frilled shirt-front, and small black tie, and his little black beard and dark face over that, he looked very nervous and self-conscious.  He had not the habit of entertaining.  Nor had Constance; but her benevolence ever bubbling up to the calm surface of her personality made self-consciousness impossible for her.  Miss Insull was also present, in shop-black, ‘to help.’  Lastly there was Amy, now as the years passed slowly assuming the character of a faithful retainer, though she was only twenty-three.  An ugly, abrupt, downright girl, with convenient notions of pleasure!  For she would rise early and retire late in order to contrive an hour to go out with Master Cyril; and to be allowed to put Master Cyril to bed was, really, her highest bliss.

All these elders were continually inserting arms into the fringe of fluffy children that surrounded the heaped table; removing dangerous spoons out of cups into saucers, replacing plates, passing cakes, spreading jam, whispering consolations, explanations, and sage counsel.  Mr. Critchlow, snow-white now but unbent, remarked that there was ‘a pretty cackle,’ and he sniffed.  Although the window was slightly open, the air was heavy with the natural human odour which young children transpire.  More than one mother, pressing her nose into a lacy mass, to whisper, inhaled that pleasant perfume with a voluptuous thrill.