"I'm fair in a dither, laddie," Granny Bennett said to Pip, rubbing between her eyes.

As soon as they'd come to Camden, Granny had felt the strain of being back in the palace kitchen, and expected to make sweet dishes that were literally fit for a king. She knew there was a buzz of gossip that she was too old, past it, not up to it now, and that made her determined to work all the harder to prove that she was still capable.

So far, everything seemed to be satisfactory, but now the Spring Festival approached, and Granny Bennett had to pull out all the stops in making a good impression. There was a luncheon  party for the court, which wasn't too difficult: Senor Montez was making cream of asparagus soup, spinach soufflés, fried trout, green salads, roast lamb, and spring vegetables.

Granny had planned lemon cheesecakes for pudding in fluted pastry shells, decorated with sugared primroses, and topped with whipped cream. It was a huge number of people, and everything had to be perfect, but as far as baking went, it was a bit of a doddle.

The part of the Spring Festival that had got her in a dither was that there was going to be a children's party on the east lawn of Camden Palace, and afterwards little Princess Alice would be  hosting her first tea party for her friends, and the children of the court. The food had to be spectacular, it had to fit the theme of the festival, and at the same time, must be such that children would love eating it.

Given how fussy children can be, and how they would already be tired and fretful from playing and dancing on the lawn, Granny could see dozens of reasons why things might go horribly wrong, and she would bear the blame for them.

Pip did everything he could to soothe her, and willingly allowed himself to be used as a guinea pig, enthusiastically giving his assent to all the party food. Nevertheless, Granny was pulled as tight as a fiddle string, and had trouble getting to sleep at night, while her dreams mostly involved one culinary disaster after another.

All the servants at the palace were in a bit of a dither over the Spring Festival, the mood becoming increasingly morose as the weather turned damp and windy.

"A wet Spring Festival means seven weeks of rain ahead," predicted one of the kitchen wenches glumly.

"I am more concerned about the weather ruining the children's party," sighed Madame Fontaine, the head housekeeper. "The princess will be desolate if the little ones cannot play outdoors."

"And everyone will track mud though the palace," moaned a maidservant.

But the weather was the one thing Granny Bennett wasn't worried about. "You can always call up a sunny day," she said with a wink, "as long as there's enough blue sky to make a tea towel that shakes the rain away."

Most people took this as a bit of nursery humour, but Pip knew that Granny really was very lucky with the weather. They had fine cool mornings to pick mushrooms, a strong wind to help shake the fruit from the trees at the end of apple harvest, and when Granny said the garden needed watering, it rained by evening. 

Granny had muttered darkly that a green Yuletide would fatten only the graveyards, and sure enough, they had a heavy snowfall on the Winter Solstice. Her one great failure was the long stifling summer which had taken Pip's mother, but Granny said the almanac could only be crossed so far.

Pip had full confidence in her, and when the sun set the evening before in a rose-streaked sky, he'd known that the Spring Festival would have good weather. For everyone in the country knows the familiar rhyme:

When the sun goes down in a deep pink glow
You'll be sure of a fine morn on the morrow

At last the dreaded day arrived, with everyone up before dawn, peering anxiously through the eastern windows. And when the sun appeared on the horizon over the sea, its rays were so radiant and golden that they all gave a sigh of relief. The Spring Festival had been saved.

Pip was roped in to help with the extra work. He wasn't allowed to prepare food, but he washed dishes, arranged flowers, set tables, folded linen napkins, acted as a message boy, and put little decorated cards next to everyone's plate. 

He tried not to feel resentful that other children were, at the same time, hunting for decorated eggs and making spring baskets filled with wildflowers. He told himself that the work he was doing was far more interesting than dancing with little girls or playing party games.

A maidservant told Pip that the tea party was ready, and he could have a peek before the children came in. The room had dozens of tables, set with crisp white linen and delicate porcelain with floral designs, the tables laden with windflowers, kingcups, and daffydown dillies. Each child's name card was adorned with a dainty picture of a spring flower, or a baby animal such as a lamb or a chick, and every child had a little basket to take home filled with lilac-coloured sugar candies shaped like eggs.

On the table were plates of egg and watercress sandwiches, cream cheese and chive sandwiches, curd tarts to represent maidenhood, apricot jam tarts to represent the rising sun, saffron buns shaped like hares, sugar biscuits shaped like lambs covered in fluffy white icing, and banana fairy cakes made to look like chicks with their wings out. 

The centrepiece was a massive chocolate cake filled with cream, decorated with sugared violets, and with a solid chocolate egg for each slice of the cake. The base of the cake was on a platter of what looked hay, but was really spun sugar, with little yellow marzipan chicks hatching from white marzipan eggs.

Pip looked a moment too long, and the children arrived, with Princess Alice leading the way. She was no longer the chubby toddler in the painting, but a slim maiden a year or two younger than Pip, already taller than many of the other girls and a few of the boys, and her expression far more sober than that of her portrait. Like the other girls, she was wearing a white lace dress with a gold sash, while the boys were dressed in gold suits with crisp white shirts. There was really too much white all around for a children's party, and the laundry would be kept busy getting grass stains and chocolate off these pretty outfits.

''Hist, away with you," whispered the maidservant when she saw Pip still had his head around the door. ''You mustn't be seen."

Pip vanished, but he was able to report back to Granny Bennett that everything looked beautiful for the party, the children didn't seem tired or fretful in the least but content and with good appetite from their play, and the food was mouthwatering.

That evening, as Granny lay recovering on the sofa with a cold washcloth on her forehead, Pip said thoughtfully:

''Granny, I think Princess Alice is the prettiest girl I've ever seen. She is tall and slender, and has long golden hair that goes right down her back in waves, and big brown eyes like a deer."

''Well, you can see all you want, but a princess is not for the likes of you," Granny replied, a bit snappishly because she was very tired.

''I know that, Granny," said Pip patiently. ''Only ... do you think if I'd had a little sister, she would have looked that pretty?"

''Oh laddie, your sister would nay have been tall, but a wee fairy with flaxen hair and eyes the colour of harebells. She would have been very pretty, and very precious, and your nose would have been put out of joint soon enough with all the petting she received."

''Could you ... could you have taken both of us to Camden? I mean, when the time came?"

Granny Bennett looked sad. ''I couldn't have, laddie. Mr Smedley would never have let me have two children in here. It would have broke my heart in half, but one of you would have had to go to an orphanage in Camden where we could visit."

Pip realised that it would have been him, since he was older and a boy, and a boy must always protect his little sister.

''Well, perhaps it's a good thing I didn't have a sister then," Pip admitted. ''But if things had been different, I would have loved one like you said, a tiny little fairy princess with big blue eyes. I would have taken care of her, and taught her to ride, and made her dresses, and carried her everywhere, and all my games would have been for two people."

He waited for Granny Bennett to say something, but the poor old woman had fallen asleep on the sofa, worn out from all the work she'd had to do.

Granny only felt pleased about the Spring Festival when she received a handwritten note in her pigeon hole a week or so later, stamped with the royal seal.

Dear Mrs Bennett,

Thank you so much for my lovely tea party you made for the Spring Festival. Everyone loved the scrummy food, especially the chocolate cake. It was absolutely super, and Daddy says I am very lucky. You are a jolly wiz of a cook, and I wish I could give you a gold medal, only Daddy said I was too young to give out medals, and was being very silly. I will give you a medal when I am big.

Yours sincerely,

Alice

HRH Princess Royal

''Bless the wee lassie," said Granny Bennett, stroking the paper and marvelling at how thick and satiny it felt between her fingers. She carefully put the letter away in a wooden box which held all her personal treasures.