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Walking in the dusk toward the lights of home, the Reverend Mr. Henry Tilney was surprised to see his eldest loping down the lane to meet him.
"Father," Peter Tilney said without preamble, "you simply must rein Mother in." His expression was long-suffering and faintly bilious.
Henry looped his arm around his son's skinny shoulders. "I shall do no such thing, my lad. What's she up to now?"
"She's plotting. "
"How delightful! Plotting what?"
"Well, I'm sure I don't know." He sniffed. "It's really unbecoming in a vicar's wife."
Not for the first time, Henry wondered how he and Catherine had managed to produce such a stuffed shirt. Peter was naturally their pride and joy, in equal shares with his siblings, but the boy had become positively insufferable lately.
At Christmas, his mother-in-law had said it was the age, and that all of her children had gone through periods where they were insufferable in their own particular ways. And that likely he had too.
"I have always been a delight," Henry had said, whereupon his sister Elinor had been attacked with a sudden and violent coughing fit.
Now he asked, "What, may I ask, is so terribly offensive about your mother's plotting?" He gently urged his son forward and they started walking again, more slowly.
"She and the children - "
Henry rolled his eyes, careful not to let Peter see. The next oldest of the "children" was Ellie, a whole thirteen months Peter's junior.
"- are whispering and giggling and rushing around the house and making a terrible noise." He sniffed. "I can hardly focus on my Latin."
"You can hardly focus on your Latin when it's dead silent," Henry observed. Peter's gifts decidedly did not lay in languages.
"Which is why I really need to study!"
"One day's loss will hardly set you back for life, I think," Henry said. "Unless you believe your mother's nefarious plotting likely to continue?"
"I hope not," Peter said primly. "Father, really, can't Mother strive to have a little more dignity?"
He thought of the last time he'd dropped in on a planning meeting for the annual village fete, and the expression in Catherine's eyes as she met his over the teapot - faintly murderous, a tad pleading. He'd grimaced in return, a silent apology for the role that being his wife had imposed upon her.
In the next moment, she'd smiled sweetly at the mayor's wife and suggested a reasonable compromise to the pitched battle over the location of the pie tent. Which had freed them all up to move on, unfortunately, to the matter of the sack races.
"Your mother has extraordinary measures of dignity and restraint," Henry told his son. "More than perhaps either of us realize. I would consider this, too: if the Good Lord intended us to be dignified and restrained all the time, He wouldn't have made being ridiculous so much fun."
Peter scrunched his face. “I have doubts about the theological underpinnings of your argument, Father.”
“Mmm, I would be delighted to hear them. Tomorrow. In Latin.”
Stymied, Peter sulked all the way up the front walk. Henry gave him a hug around the shoulders. “Come on, let’s go see what exactly your mother’s up to.”
As they stepped in the house, a very small voice shrieked out, "Papa!" Henry's shins were assaulted by the voice's owner, Agatha, the youngest, barely a year of age and just graduated from the staggering stage to something like walking.
He untied her leading strings from the table and hoisted her up into his arms, lifting her above his head, as she squealed with joy. From the dining room, whispers and giggles erupted and were swiftly stifled. Clearly the plotting continued apace.
Settling Aggie on his hip, he said, "Now what's going on around here?"
She wrapped her arms around his neck in a stranglehold and babbled. Since "Papa" and "Mama" were the extent of her vocabulary, this was unsurprising.
All three children between Agatha and Peter flooded out into the front hall, hugging him and chattering in an explosion of happy noise. Their mother followed more slowly, but no less smilingly.
"Papa!" Ellie said. "You should come to dinner now."
"May I take off my hat first?"
"You might even take off your coat, my dear," Catherine said.
He leaned over their children's heads to kiss her. "You are all kindness, my love," he said, handing Aggie over so he could divest himself of his coat and hat.
"Papa, come and eat!" Jamie insisted, tugging at his breeches.
"My goodness, I must look famished indeed," he laughed, allowing himself to be herded like a single sheep by several overeager herding dogs towards the dining room.
He stopped short on the threshold, staring at the strings of paper chains and the crooked silver stars stuck haphazardly to the walls. The table was laid with the good linen tablecloth they'd gotten from her parents on their marriage, and their best china and silver lay at each setting.
"What's all this?" He looked around in genuine confusion.
"Papa!"
"It's - "
"Today - "
"Bir-thay," Aggie said, quite clearly, from Catherine's arms.
Then he remembered the date, and that it was his fortieth birthday. "Why," he said. "Why, so it is."
Catherine kissed Aggie's cheek. "I had a presentiment you would have forgotten, my dear," she said to him. "Luckily, your children plotted a celebration for you."
"Just the children?"
She tucked her chin and smiled through her lashes at him, just as delightful as the girl he'd flirted with at the Assembly Rooms a lifetime ago. "Don't let your birthday feast get cold, now."
His older brother and his father might sneer at their harum-scarum household, with even the youngest children included in most meals and running about the house instead of being confined to the nursery. But it suited Henry and Catherine very well, even when it took ten minutes and a scuffle over who was kicking whom under the table to get everyone seated.
"This is capital," Henry said, after saying grace. "What a delightful birthday feast already, and I haven't even tasted it."
"You like it, Papa?" Ellie said, as the soup was served.
"I like it very much. Did you work all afternoon on this?"
"Yes, and we just finished when you came in!"
"Just, just finished," said little Jenny.
"Did you? You know, if Peter hadn't come out to meet me in the lane, I would have caught you all before everything was ready."
Catherine grinned broadly. "Why do you think we sent him?"
He blinked at her, and then looked at his son, who was looking very smug.
"Why Peter, you sly thing," Henry said.
"Yes," Catherine said, giving the top of his head a noisy kiss and rumpling his hair, "I'm terribly proud."
He squirmed away, smoothing his hair down. "Motherrrr!"
FINIS