Then Bobbie said:-- "Mother, would you mind if we didn't have the buns for tea to-night, but on the fifteenth?
That's next Thursday." "_I_ don't mind when you have them, dear," said Mother, "but why ?" "Because it's Perks's birthday," said Bobbie; "he's thirty-two, and he says he doesn't keep his birthday any more, because he's got other things to keep--not rabbits or secrets--but the kids and the missus." "You mean his wife and children," said Mother.
"Yes," said Phyllis; "it's the same thing, isn't it ?" "And we thought we'd make a nice birthday for him.

He's been so awfully jolly decent to us, you know, Mother," said Peter, "and we agreed that next bun-day we'd ask you if we could." "But suppose there hadn't been a bun-day before the fifteenth ?" said Mother.
"Oh, then, we meant to ask you to let us anti--antipate it, and go without when the bun-day came." "Anticipate," said Mother.

"I see.Certainly.It would be nice to put his name on the buns with pink sugar, wouldn't it ?" "Perks," said Peter, "it's not a pretty name." "His other name's Albert," said Phyllis; "I asked him once." "We might put A.P.," said Mother; "I'll show you how when the day comes." This was all very well as far as it went.

But even fourteen halfpenny buns with A.P.on them in pink sugar do not of themselves make a very grand celebration.
"There are always flowers, of course," said Bobbie, later, when a really earnest council was being held on the subject in the hay-loft where the broken chaff-cutting machine was, and the row of holes to drop hay through into the hay-racks over the mangers of the stables below.
"He's got lots of flowers of his own," said Peter.
"But it's always nice to have them given you," said Bobbie, "however many you've got of your own.

We can use flowers for trimmings to the birthday.