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There was no question about it. This was exciting.
"Mint humbugs?"
"They're from Dick, Douglas, Daniel and Duncan."
"O, jubilate! And I have an enormous fruitcake from my grandmother. Shall we have..."
"...a midnight feast! Oh yes please, Trixie!"
"Who shall we invite? Bagsy no Sybil or Monica, Day's-eye. I know we're friends with them now but you must admit they still are jolly hard work sometimes."
Daisy frowned. "But I don't want to leave them out and then invite lots of our other friends. That wouldn't be very sporting, Trixie."
Trixie nodded, reluctantly, but then wrinkled her nose and smiled.
"Hang on, though," said Daisy, "I have a wondrous idea. Why don't we just have a midnight feast for the two of us? Out in the grounds, maybe. It could be an adventure."
"Oh Daisy, that's a marvellous idea! But I'm not sure about being outside. The nights are balmy at the moment but we don't want to get our dressing gowns dirty."
"No..."
"So how about Clare's cabin?"
"Clare's... what?"
Trixie picked up her friend and whirled her around. "Her summerhouse! It's out in the woods beyond the hockey field. It's so jolly! She uses it as her own private retreat. But she's let me use it before, and I know she wouldn't mind us borrowing it for such a wonderful lark as this!"
* * * * * * *
The summer house was dusty and smelled of lavender and cut grass and leaves and - to Daisy's delight - candle wax. Her first match sputtered out quickly and the second she wasted lingering on Trixie's face as her friend pulled impossible silly grimaces at her to make the most of the shadows thrown by the flame. With the third match she lit seven fat beeswax candles on the sill of the summerhouse, and two tapers thrust in a vase on a rickety bookcase.
Trixie found two squashy cushions and laid them close together on the floor. She stood, bowed elaborately to her friend to sit beside her, took a picnic blanket from beneath her dressing gown and with great ado laid out some small plates, a large and indeed magnificent fruit cake, a small flask of milk and the jar of mint humbugs.
The cake was moist and crumbly and Daisy kept standing up to shake bits off it from her nightdress, while Trixie clapped her hands and giggled. There were no mugs so they passed the flask of milk between them, and Trixie made Daisy spit hers out with laughter by making a big show of wiping her mouth on the back of her hand as though she were a working man satisfied after a long pint of ale.
By the time they had devoured the cake they were both as near full to bursting as they ever were (which, admittedly, wasn't saying much).
"I couldn't manage another mouthful if you paid me in poems," said Trixie at last, patting her stomach and groaning as Daisy picked up the humbug jar and began to draw circles with it in the air.
"Are you sure, Trixie?" teased Daisy. "Not one little humbug?"
"No, truly, Daisy-mine. I couldn't."
Daisy opened the jar and looked thoughtfully inside. "Half a one?"
Trixie fell back against her cushion and laughed. "Oh lord, I'm defeated! Alright then, just half a one."
She sat up and held out her hand, but Daisy took a sweet, grinned, and popped it between her teeth.
Trixie found herself strangely transfixed as her friend crawled along the picnic blanket towards her, gently bringing her mouth close enough so that they could part the humbug between them. For an instant they lingered with their faces almost touching, but then Trixie, never to be daunted long, leaned forward herself and bit the sweet in two.
And then the tension broke, and Trixie put an arm around Daisy and pulled her close as they sucked on their sweets.
"You know," she said after a while, "perhaps half a sweet wasn't quite enough after all."
Daisy patted her arm. "I'll go and get another one."
"No, wait," said Trixie. "I'll do it." She scooted over to the jar as quickly as she could, knowing that what she planned to do was a little daring, even for Trixie Martin. If she stopped to think she would probably bottle out, and she would rather not do that.
She took out another humbug, crawled back towards her friend, and placed the sweet very deliberately between her lips. And then she just sat there with a twinkle in her eye, looking up at her friend and waiting.
Daisy gulped. This was new, and not exactly what she had intended. But Daisy too was never to be daunted long. She leaned forward, retreated, grinned, and then gently laid her lips against Trixie's.
Was it a kiss? Their lips were soft against each other, and as they passed the humbug between them, perhaps on occasion their tongues met.
The humbug shrank down to almost nothing, until finally Trixie drew back, whispering "you win", and Daisy crunched down and ate the last of it.
Then she put an impetuous hand on her friend's cheek, and kissed her on the nose. And then again. And then Trixie kissed her back, on the lips. And this time they didn't need the mint humbug.
* * * * * *
The candles were burnt out long before they awoke. They had slept together like children, the kisses leading nowhere other than to the same gentle embraces they had exchanged time and time again in the year they had known each other.
There would be a time for other things, of course. Already they both knew that. A time for the kisses to yield to something else, something bigger and more frightening and wonderful than any adventure they had taken together. A time to become women, or whatever it was they would be when they left as much of their childhood behind as they ever would (which probably wouldn't be much). But for now this was love, first love, true love, and it was all it needed to be.
Even so, when the dawn came in through the window of the summerhouse and startled Daisy into wakefulness, it found her naked as the day she was born.
"Erm, Trixie," she said, "where's my nightie?"
Trixie yawned. "It was covered in crumbs. Were you warm enough, Day's-eye? I hoped that cuddling up together would be enough, but..."
Daisy planted a gentle kiss on her friend's shoulder. "I was fine, Trixie."
Trixie sat up, and began to re-plait Daisy's hair where it was ruffled from the night. "Scooterons-nous, Daisy? We don't want anyone pestering us about where we've gone."
Daisy sighed. "You're right, of course, Trixie."
They made short work of tidying up after themselves, well-practised in the art of the quick get-away from any scene that could get them - or worse, Clare - into trouble.
They held hands as they ran together through the woods and across the hockey field and back into the school building. And as they reached their dorm and closed the door behind them, Trixie leaned back against it with a beatific grin on her face and said:
"You know, Daisy, I think that was the most wondrous idea you've ever had."
And Daisy grinned, and said nothing.
But that evening she wrote to her brothers. And the next month they sent a jar of the finest mint humbugs money could buy, addressed to Miss Trixie Martin.