The dolls, from the featureless midshipman to the colossal professional beauty sitting in her own costly perambulator (a present from Mrs.Pratt), felt the heat, and showed it by their moist countenances.

The only person who was cool was a small, nude, china infant in its zinc bath, the property of Stella, whose determination to reach central facts, and to penetrate to the root of the matter, at present took the form of tearing or licking off all that could be torn or licked from objects of interest.

Hester, who had presented her with the floating baby in the bath, sometimes wondered, as she watched Stella conscientiously work through a well-dressed doll down to its stitched sawdust compartments, what Mr.Gresley would make of his daughter when she turned her attention to theology.
They were all sitting in a tight circle round the handkerchief, Regie watching Hester cutting a new supply of plates out of smooth leaves with her little gilt scissors, while Mary and Stella tried alternately to suck an inaccessible grain of sugar out of the bottom of an acorn cup.
Rachel and Dick had come up on their silent wheels, and were looking at them over the wall before Hester was aware of their presence.
"May we join the tea-party ?" asked Rachel, and Hester started violently.
"I am afraid the gate is locked," she said.

"But perhaps you can climb it." "We can't leave the bicycles outside, though," said Dick, and he took a good look at the heavy padlocked gate.

Then he slowly lifted it off its hinges, wheeled in the bicycles, and replaced the gate in position.
Rachel looked at him.
"Do you always do what you want to do ?" she said, involuntarily.
"It saves trouble," he said, "especially as no one can be such a first-class fool as to think a padlock will keep a gate shut.