Little Sally Waters

BY
ETHEL CALVERT PHILLIPS

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
EDITH F. BUTLER

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1926

CONTENTS

Drawn by Edith F. Butler

Once upon a time, and not so long ago, there lived a little girl named Sally Waters.

She was a merry, laughing little girl, with a lively twinkle in her bright blue eyes, a neat pair of dimples—one in each red cheek—and the sauciest little nose that has ever been seen.

Indeed, sometimes her father called her ‘Saucy Sally.’ But that was only his way of saying that he loved her better than any one else in the world, except, of course, Sally’s mother.

One bright summer morning Sally sat out on her doorstep in the sun. At her feet, half asleep, lay Buff, Sally’s plump, yellow pussy-cat. Beside[2] her sat Tippy, her little brown dog, his ears cocked, his nose in the air.

But this morning Sally was not smiling. She looked so sober that Tippy watched her carefully with his shining brown eyes. She looked so very sober that Tippy was almost afraid that Sally was going to cry.

What ailed little Sally Waters, who was usually so merry and full of fun?

The truth is, Sally felt lonely. Not five minutes ago she had waved good-bye to Father and Mother as they started off for a day in the city. And as Sally remembered what a long, long day this was sure to be before she saw Father and Mother again, it really did seem as if Sally were going to cry.

She quite forgot that she was to spend the day with Aunt Bee just next door. She quite forgot that Father had promised to bring her a present from the city. She quite forgot that she had whispered to Mother, with her very last hug, that she would be as good as gold all day long.

[3]All Sally remembered was that Father and Mother had left her. And a big round tear had squeezed itself from the corner of each eye and was actually rolling down her cheek when Tippy sprang up in the air with such a sudden, such a comical sneeze that Sally laughed out loud. Buff opened his sleepy eyes with a look of surprise that made Sally laugh again, while Tippy, seeing Sally’s smiling face, jumped up and down on the doorstep, barking merrily the while.

After her laugh Sally felt better, much better.

‘We must go straight to Aunt Bee’s, Tippy,’ said she, drying her cheeks with the hem of her frock. ‘She will be watching for you and me, I expect. Good-bye, Buff. Take good care of the house, unless you would like to come with us, too,’ she added politely.

Sally knew that Buff usually chose to stay at home alone. So she was not at all surprised to see her pussy settle himself in a sunny spot and prepare to take a comfortable morning nap.

[4]‘Good-bye, Buff,’ said she again. ‘Be a good pussy.’

And with a farewell pat, she and Tippy were off.

Sally might have gone to Aunt Bee’s through the garden and over the hedge. But instead she and Tippy walked down her front path and up Aunt Bee’s just as if she were real company come to spend the day.

As Sally had said, there was Aunt Bee waiting for them in the doorway.

‘Come in, Sally,’ she began briskly, ‘and help me make a cake. Tippy may stay out in the garden and chase the butterflies.’

‘Will you really let me help?’ asked Sally, smiling at the very thought and holding fast to Aunt Bee’s hand on their way out to the kitchen. ‘What can I do to help, Aunt Bee?’

‘You can beat eggs, and butter pans, and watch,’ was Aunt Bee’s answer, as she fastened an apron on Sally that reached from her neck to her heels.

[5]So first of all, Sally buttered pans with might and main. Then she spun Aunt Bee’s little egg-beater round and round and round until her bowl of eggs was as white and frothy as cream.

‘Better than I could do it myself, Sally,’ said Aunt Bee with a smile.

Last of all she watched Aunt Bee mix the batter, and pour it into the pans, and shut it in the oven. She watched her make the icing, chocolate icing, too.

Then Sally stopped watching because she was scraping, scraping the bowls and eating what she scraped. She ate a whole spoonful of cake batter and more than a spoonful of icing.

‘You have scraped the bowls so clean I am afraid you won’t be able to eat your luncheon,’ said Aunt Bee.

But that was not true. Sally did eat her luncheon, running out to the pantry only twice to see whether the icing on the cake had grown quite hard.

[6]For the cake was to be used at a party later that afternoon.

‘We will carry a little table out into the garden, Sally, under the black-cherry tree,’ said Aunt Bee. ‘You would like that better than going down to the rocks this afternoon, wouldn’t you?’

Sally, you must know, lived by the sea, and almost every day went down to play on the rocky shore. A garden party would be much more of a treat, and Sally said so, with her arms about Aunt Bee’s neck in a tight, tight squeeze.

‘I thought you would like a party,’ said wise Aunt Bee. ‘You shall set the table with the dishes I had when I was a little girl, and then you and I will sit down like ladies at tea and have the party.’

Sally pressed her hands together hard and smiled all over her round little face.

‘This is the very nicest time I have had since—since Christmas,’ said Sally with a gay little hop. ‘I think you are just as good as Santa Claus, Aunt Bee.’

[7]Then Sally had a thought.

‘Won’t Tippy have any of the party?’ asked Sally.

‘Tippy? He shall have a bone,’ was Aunt Bee’s answer. ‘That is the kind of a party he will like, you know.’

So Sally went into the garden to tell Tippy all about the party. And as Tippy was still chasing butterflies, Sally in turn chased Tippy round and round, in and out the garden beds, until at last she and Tippy could run no more and sat themselves down on the doorstep to cool off and rest.

Now the street upon which both Sally and Aunt Bee lived was a narrow street, a narrow, crooked little street that ran downhill to the sea with many a twist and turn. And across the way from Aunt Bee and Sally there stood a little house on the slope of the hill in which lived their friend Miss Neppy Lee.

Miss Neppy was a little old lady who lived all alone, with not even a cat or a dog to keep[8] her company. But early every summer Miss Neppy put a sign in her front window, a card that read ‘Rooms,’ and every summer Miss Neppy had a paying guest or two who stayed until the flowers had gone and the wind grew cold and autumn and winter were close at hand.

Sally was always interested in Miss Neppy’s ‘Roomers,’ as they were called. Very often the ‘Roomer’ would be a tall young man or a pretty young lady who, every day, with paint box and easel, would go down to the rocks at the end of Sally’s street to paint pictures of the sea. They usually nodded and waved their hands at the little girl over the way who smiled at them from her doorstep in such friendly fashion. ‘Roomers’ seemed pleasant people to Sally, and she wished with all her heart that Mother and Aunt Bee would put signs in their front windows and take ‘Roomers,’ too.

Now, as Sally sat in Aunt Bee’s doorway, she glanced over at Miss Neppy’s window, where last night the sign ‘Rooms’ had gleamed in all[9] its black and white. And in a twinkling, Sally saw that the sign ‘Rooms’ was gone. Even more, as she looked, she saw Miss Neppy’s front door open and a little girl slip out and seat herself on the doorstone.

She was a small girl, not quite so tall as Sally. Her eyes were brown, a gentle brown, while Sally’s were bright and blue. Her brown hair curled softly about her face, not at all like Sally’s yellow mop that had to be brushed and brushed before it would even think of lying down.

The little girl looked over at Sally and Sally looked over at the little girl. Then Sally smiled and the little girl smiled back. Next Sally waved her hand, and after waiting a moment as if to make sure that Sally meant her, the little girl waved her hand, too.

Aunt Bee came round the corner of the house and Sally sprang off the doorstep to meet her.

‘Aunt Bee,’ whispered Sally in a loud voice,[10] ‘look over there. See that little girl on Miss Neppy’s doorstep!’

Aunt Bee looked over at the strange little girl who was watching every motion Sally made.

‘She must have come to Miss Neppy’s last night or this morning,’ said Aunt Bee. ‘She looks as if she were about your age, Sally.’

Sally was silent for a moment. Then she caught her aunt’s hand in a sudden squeeze.

‘Aunt Bee, oh, Aunt Bee!’ exclaimed Sally. ‘Do you think that little girl could come to our party?’

‘Why, I think so,’ said Aunt Bee, laughing at Sally’s eager face. ‘I will go over and speak to Miss Neppy about it.’

So over the way stepped kind Aunt Bee, and back she came, in a moment or two, leading the strange little girl by the hand.

‘Sally, this is Alice, Alice Burr,’ said Aunt Bee, ‘and she has come with her mother to spend the summer here at Miss Neppy’s house.[11] Now if you little girls will set the table, I will bring out the refreshments for our party.’

The two little girls soon made friends as they spread the cloth over the low table set in the cool shade of the black-cherry tree.

‘Don’t you think my Aunt Bee’s dishes are beautiful?’ asked Sally, setting out cups and saucers in a series of gentle thumps.

Alice was putting round the plates, but she stopped to admire the gay pink-and-white china with her head tilted on one side.

‘It is the prettiest set I have ever seen,’ said she earnestly. ‘I always like pink flowers best of all.’

‘Now Tippy must have his bone,’ said Sally, when the table was set and they were ready to sit down. ‘And I think I will run home for Buff and bring him over to have a saucer of milk. It is too bad he should miss the party just because he is not very sociable.’

So Buff was coaxed through the hedge to join the party, and Tippy was placed the other side of the tree to gnaw his bone. The cake was cut[12] and passed about. Milk was poured from a tall amber pitcher into the delicate pink-and-white cups. And Sally and Alice and Aunt Bee smiled at one another as they said over and over again what a pleasant party they were having under the black-cherry tree.

‘It won’t take us a moment to clear away,’ said Aunt Bee, when the pitcher was empty and the cake half gone. ‘I think, Sally, that you and Alice will have time to play in the garden.’

And so they did.

First Sally showed Alice all about Aunt Bee’s garden, and then they squeezed through the hedge into Sally’s yard.

‘Here is the robin’s nest up in the maple tree,’ cried Sally, pointing up among the leafy green boughs. ‘Can you see, Alice? Can you see the birds in the nest? And here on the edge of the path is the hole where the old toad lives. He comes out for a walk every night when the sun goes down. And here is my swing, Alice. Do you like to swing?’

[13]Yes, Alice liked to swing.

And it was while they were playing happily together that Sally heard Aunt Bee’s voice calling,

‘Sally! Sally! Here come Mother and Father up the street!’

Sally could scarcely believe it. It seemed such a short time ago that she had watched them out of sight on their way to the city. How quickly the long, long day had passed!

‘I was good, Mother,’ called Sally, dancing up and down and then running forward to fling her arms about Mother’s neck. ‘I was as good as gold. Did you bring me a present, Father? The present you promised you would?’

Of course Father had brought Sally her present, a pretty, white wooden dove, whose wings flapped merrily to and fro in the wind.

Father fastened him outside the window in Sally’s room where the breeze from the sea blew all day long.

When bedtime came Sally went to the window[14] for a last peep at her little white dove, and there across the way in Miss Neppy’s window stood Alice, in her nightgown, too, ready like Sally to creep into her little white bed.

‘Good-night, Alice,’ called Sally across the narrow street. ‘Come and play with me to-morrow, with my bird and dolls and everything.’

‘Mother,’ said Sally solemnly, as she turned away from the window, ‘I don’t know what I would do if Alice hadn’t come to stay at Miss Neppy’s this summer.’

The first thing Sally heard the next morning when she opened her eyes was a splash and a drip, a drip and a splash.

‘It is raining,’ said Sally. ‘My new little dove will be drowned.’

But when Sally ran to the window, her little white dove didn’t seem to be minding the rain in the least. His coat glistened in the wet like silver, his black eyes looked blacker, his yellow bill more yellow, while his wings whirled briskly about in the damp wind as if the gay little fellow were really enjoying the rainy day.

‘I believe he likes the rain, Mother,’ said Sally, ‘and so do I, if I may have Alice over to play with me.’

Sally’s playroom was up in the attic. At one end were trunks and boxes and bundles. These belonged to Mother and were not to be touched.[16] But the other end was Sally’s own, and here were gathered all her toys and treasures, large and small.

So up the steep attic stairs this rainy morning climbed Sally, followed by Alice from over the way, who held under one arm a gay picture book and under the other a plump, if somewhat dingy, rag doll.

‘I thought I would bring my picture book,’ Said Alice, out of breath at the top of the stairs, ‘and my dolly, too. Her name is Tilly Maud. But let me see your toys first.’

Sally was only too glad to walk about her end of the attic, pointing out her toys and telling the name and history of each one.

‘Here is my rocking horse,’ said she, patting a shabby gray pony, who had lost most of his tail, but whose eyes still glistened brown and bright. ‘His name is Dapple Gray. And here are three of my children. They live in this shoe-box. Their names are Dora and Nora and Flora, and no one can tell them apart but me.’

[17]Dora and Nora and Flora were three little black-haired dolls with china heads and sawdust bodies. One was dressed in pink, and one in blue, and one in green. They sat in a stiff row and smiled sweetly up at Sally and Alice with their tiny red mouths. They all had shining, black eyes and round, red cheeks and black boots painted on their china feet.

‘They look just alike to me,’ said Alice. ‘I don’t see how you ever know them apart.’

‘I will tell you,’ answered Sally, ‘only remember it is a secret.’

She leaned forward and spoke softly in Alice’s ear.

‘I know them by their clothes,’ whispered Sally. ‘Dora wears pink, and Nora wears blue, and Flora wears green. Isn’t that easy? Now come and see my other dolls. They are asleep in the cradle.’

Sally led the way to a low, old-fashioned wooden cradle, quite large enough to hold a real baby or two, and with a push set it swinging sleepily to and fro.

[18]‘It is a really-truly cradle,’ explained Sally with a nod of her head. ‘It was mine, and it was Mother’s, and it was Grandmother’s, too. But I use it for my dolls because we have no baby who needs it now.’

‘We have no baby, either,’ volunteered Alice, ‘only Mother and me.’

‘This is Nancy Lee,’ went on Sally, lifting from the cradle a doll dressed in a white middy blouse and dark blue bloomers. ‘She is made of wood. Captain Ball down the street made her. He has a little shop. See, she can bend her arms and legs, and she will never, never break.’

Nancy Lee was a sturdy, strong little doll made of wood from head to foot, with eyes of ocean blue and a neat row of yellow curls. Her back was as stiff as a poker, quite different from the floppy rag doll whom Sally now lifted from her bed.

‘Here is Paulina,’ said Sally, trying to straighten the dolly’s drooping head. ‘She is as old as I am, and almost as worn-out looking as[19] your Tilly Maud. But I love her even if she is dirty and old.’

‘They are the best to sleep with,’ said Alice soberly. ‘I have a white bed for my dolls at home. But all my toys are packed away, and I have only Tilly Maud with me here.’

‘This is my stove, and here is my doll-house,’ went on Sally, moving round the room. ‘Father made the house for me out of a big box last winter. And this sofa has a broken leg. It can’t stay downstairs. So sometimes I play it is a ship, and sometimes a train. It is anything I like. Now what shall we play this morning, Alice? You tell first what you want to play.’

‘I would like to play “house,”’ said Alice promptly. ‘I like “house” best of all. Tilly Maud is sick. She ought to go to bed.’

‘So is Paulina,’ returned Sally, well pleased with this idea. ‘See how red her face is! She has measles, I think. And Dora and Nora and Flora ought to go to bed, too. Don’t you think[20] their faces are too red, Alice, to stay up any longer?’

It was quite true that the cheeks of Dora and Nora and Flora were as red as the reddest cherries that ever grew on a tree, and Sally and Alice were of one mind in thinking that these dollies must be very ill indeed.

‘Let us put every one of them to bed together on the sofa,’ suggested Alice.

So all in a row the sick and suffering children were placed on the old sofa and tenderly covered from the chill of the rainy day.

On the end lay Tilly Maud, and next to her came Paulina, both of them long and limp and shabby, with toes that would stick out from under the coverlet no matter how often their nurses patted them down or tucked them snugly in.

‘We will put Nancy Lee to bed, too,’ decided Sally, ‘because she is sure to catch measles from the other children, even if she hasn’t them now.’

[21]So Nancy Lee, stiff and stubby, was snuggled down beside her sister Paulina.

Then came the rosy Dora and Nora and Flora, still smiling sweetly in spite of being put to bed in high black boots and the only dresses they owned in all the world.

‘Now they must have medicine,’ said Sally with spirit. ‘Here are spoons. But we haven’t any bottles. What shall we do?’

‘One can take a cup,’ answered Alice, who had been examining the stove and the little tin cupboard above it, ‘and the other can use this little pail.’

So up and down the row of sufferers went Sally and Alice, armed with their spoons and pail and cup.

‘They must have medicine every two minutes by the clock,’ said Sally, taking from the doll-house the little grandfather clock and setting the tiny pendulum a-swing.

‘It is very thick and black medicine,’ said Alice, stirring round and round in her empty[22] pail. ‘I think thick and black medicine is the best, don’t you?’

‘Always,’ was Sally’s answer, as she lifted poor Paulina to take her tenth dose.

‘See how nicely Tilly Maud drinks her medicine! She doesn’t even make a face,’ said Alice, smiling proudly down on helpless Tilly Maud, who looked as miserable as a dolly could.

‘Paulina is not so good, I am afraid,’ said Sally, with a frown and a severe wave of her spoon. ‘She doesn’t want to open her mouth for me. Perhaps I shall have to hold her nose, next time.’

‘How can you,’ asked Alice, ‘when she hasn’t any nose?’

‘S-s-sh-sh!’ said Sally. ‘I only said that to make her behave. I don’t think these children are getting well fast enough, Alice. You ride Dapple Gray for the doctor, and I will go downstairs for Tippy to come up and be the doctor for us.’

So Alice climbed on Dapple Gray and away[23] she rode at a great pace to fetch the doctor, while Sally sped downstairs in search of Master Tip.

Presently back came Sally dragging with her sleepy Buff.

‘I couldn’t bring Tippy,’ she explained, ‘because he has been out all morning in the wet and Mother wouldn’t let him come in the house with his muddy feet. He wanted to come. He is jumping and barking at the back door now. But Buff will have to do instead.’

So Buff was marched up and down the sofa and made to look each sufferer in the face. But before he had time to say whether he thought his patients better or worse, there came a loud scratching of feet, a rush up the attic stairs, and across the room whirled Tippy, wet and muddy, to land with a thump on the sofa on top of the whole family of dolls.

‘Mi-e-ow!’ cried Dr. Buff in a fright, and took refuge on the window-sill.

‘Come down, Tip, come down,’ called Sally,[24] stamping her foot; while Alice pressed her hands together in distress as she saw the pretty coverlet and the row of clean dollies spattered and spotted from one end to the other with mud.

‘Come down, come down!’ cried Sally again.

But Tippy had not finished his morning’s fun.

He did jump down from the sofa. But as he jumped, he seized in his teeth poor plump Tilly Maud who lay on the end of the row, and with the dolly in his mouth, ran round and round the room.

At this dreadful sight Alice hid her face in her hands. Sally called and stamped her foot. But Tippy cared not at all. He thought only of his fun.

Now he stopped to thump Tilly Maud up and down on the floor. Now he threw her from him only to pounce upon her again. He ran to and fro, round about, with a look on his face ‘just as if he were laughing’ Sally said afterward, when she told Father all about it that night.

Then Sally started downstairs to call Mother.

[25]When Tippy saw this, he rudely pushed past Sally on the stairs, and with Tilly Maud still in his mouth rushed like a whirlwind down through the house and out of the back door into the wet grass.

Mother could scarcely believe her eyes when Tippy, shaking Tilly Maud, flew past her, followed by Sally, with a very red face, calling out,

‘Mother! Mother! Stop him! Mother!’

Last of all came Alice, running very fast, her eyes filled with tears, but not speaking a single word.

‘Sally, what is it?’ asked Mother, catching Sally by the arm and bringing her to a stand-still. ‘You mustn’t go outdoors in the wet grass. What has Tippy in his mouth?’

‘He has Tilly Maud, Alice’s doll,’ gasped Sally, her eyes big with excitement and her hair standing out all round her head. ‘Stop him, Mother, won’t you? He has Alice’s doll.’

[26]‘She is all I have,’ wailed Alice, finding her voice. ‘She is all the dolly I have. My other dolls are packed away at home.’

Out on the back porch they all three hurried, only to see naughty Tippy racing round and round in the grass, flinging Tilly Maud up in the air, dragging her along the ground, and then running as hard and fast as ever a little brown dog could run.

Mother stepped inside and back she came with a broom. Tippy rolled his eye up at the porch. He saw the broom.

With one great fling he tossed Tilly Maud up in the air, and then off rushed Tippy and out of sight before you could say ‘Jack Robinson.’

At a nod from Mother down the steps darted Sally, but, oh! what a sad dolly it was that she brought back and laid on the porch at Mother’s and Alice’s feet.

Dirty, wet, bedraggled, torn!

Tears sprang to Sally’s eyes and tears rolled[27] down Alice’s cheeks as they looked at poor, miserable Tilly Maud lying there.

Even Mother’s face grew sober for a moment. Then she stooped and tenderly raised Tilly Maud from the ground.

‘The first thing to do is to dry Tilly Maud,’ said Mother. ‘It may be, when she is dry and cleaned, that she will be fit to play with again. And the next thing to do is to put on our hats and coats and rubbers and go down the street to Captain Ball’s.’

‘Captain Ball’s? What for?’ asked Sally.

Alice, winking away a tear, listened to what Mother had to say.

‘To buy a new doll for Alice,’ was Mother’s answer.

‘A Nancy Lee?’ cried Sally, spinning round on one toe. ‘Mother, will you buy Alice a Nancy Lee?’

‘If that is the doll Alice wants,’ said Mother, with a smile at Alice’s April face.

‘Do you?’ asked Sally, catching her friend[28] by the arm. ‘Do you want a Nancy Lee like mine?’

And Alice, with shining eyes, answered, ‘I would rather have a Nancy Lee than any other doll in all the world.’

Captain Ball kept a toy shop, and all he had for sale were dolls and ships.

He fashioned the toys himself, carved out of wood by his keen jack-knife and painted to suit his own fancy, while his sister, Miss Betsy Ball, made the clothes for the dolls and the sails for the ships quite as well as any dressmaker or sailmaker in town.

Captain Ball’s dolls and ships were popular with the children of Seabury. Almost every little boy owned a ship. Almost every little girl owned a doll.

So the Captain was not at all surprised when Sally and Alice, followed by Mrs. Waters, stepped into his front room, which was toy shop and work room in one.

‘Well, Sally,’ said the Captain, laying down the paint-brush with which he was putting a[30] pair of pretty red lips on a doll; ‘well, Sally, and how have you been this summer?’

‘I have been well,’ answered Sally, shaking hands with the Captain, ‘but this is Alice, and she isn’t well at all, because this morning Tippy ruined her doll. It is the only doll Alice has with her here, so we have come down to buy a Nancy Lee for her, just like mine.’

‘Too bad, too bad,’ said the Captain, shaking his head over naughty Tip, ‘but such accidents will happen. Now, I have three Nancy Lees this morning for Alice to choose from, one with brown hair, one with black hair, and one with yellow curls. And here is a brand-new little Jack Tar, finished only yesterday, in case she would like a boy doll for a change.’

The Captain waved his hand toward a low shelf where the dollies sat in an orderly row, and turned to talk to Mrs. Waters, while Alice and Sally made their choice.

As the Captain had said, there was a Nancy Lee with brown curls, a Nancy Lee with black[31] curls, and a Nancy Lee with golden curls like the one Sally had at home. Each wore a spotless white middy blouse with trimmings of blue and a pair of dark blue bloomers. There was also one boy doll with a yellow crop of boyish curls and the same blue eyes with which the Captain had graced all the Nancy Lees. He was dressed very much like the girls, except that a tiny handkerchief peeped from a mannish pocket in his blouse.

‘Which do you like best?’ whispered Sally.

Alice whispered back, ‘I don’t know.’

But after a pause she said, ‘I think that I like the boy best, because I never have had a boy doll. Have you?’

‘No,’ returned Sally, ‘I never have. And, if we play together, it will be much better if you have a boy and I have a girl, instead of having them just exactly alike.’

‘I think his name is pretty, too,’ said Alice thoughtfully. ‘Jack Tar.’

‘That means a sailor,’ said Sally, who was[32] wise in ways of the sea. ‘And Nancy Lee means a sailor girl, you know. There is a song about her. Father whistles it.

sang Sally. ‘That is the song about Nancy Lee.’

‘His clothes are just as pretty as Nancy’s,’ said Alice, whose heart was plainly set upon jolly little Jack Tar. ‘Aren’t they?’

‘Every bit as pretty,’ agreed Sally. ‘And I will tell you something. If ever you wanted him to have different clothes, you could just put them on him and turn him into a girl, and I don’t believe he would ever know the difference. Only don’t let him hear us talking about it.’

And Sally put her finger to her lip and looked the other way for a moment, in case Jack Tar should have been trying to hear what she said.

[33]So Jack Tar was chosen to go home with Alice, and once the choice was made, the girls felt free to wander about and look at the Captain’s ships, of which there were every kind and color that a little boy would care to own.

There were sail-boats and row-boats, yachts and schooners, fishing smacks and dories, even a little warship and a tiny submarine. They ranged in color from gayest red and blue and yellow to the sober gray of the small man-o’-war.

Before they were halfway round the room, Sally and Alice had almost begun to wish that they were little boys.

‘I could sail a boat as well as a boy,’ said Sally in a low voice.

‘So could I,’ returned Alice, ‘but I don’t want to. I would rather play with Jack Tar.’

‘Of course,’ agreed Sally in haste, ‘so would I. But perhaps some day Father will buy a ship for me, too.’

The rain had ceased. A watery sun was shining[34] and patches of blue sky were showing here and there.

As they stepped out of the Captain’s shop they could hear the noise of the sea rushing up among the rocks at the back of the Captain’s house. ‘Let us go home along the shore, Mother,’ begged Sally. ‘Alice came only yesterday and she hasn’t seen the ocean yet at all.’

So Mother and Sally and Alice, carrying Jack Tar, walked home along the rocky shore. The sea breeze blew their hair about their ears. The waves thundered up among the rocks and broke into creamy foam. The boats in the harbor danced up and down and bobbed about on the tossing gray water.

Then, suddenly, the sun shone out, warm and golden, and turned the whole world into blue and white. Blue sky, blue waves, white boats, and great white clouds!

‘Oh, look, look!’ cried Alice, standing quite still in pleasure at the beautiful sight.

[35]‘When the tide goes out and we can climb down among the rocks, we find all sorts of things in the little pools, don’t we, Mother? Seaweed, and periwinkles, and little crabs, and jellyfish. Sometimes we go to the beach, and play in the water and dig in the sand and find shells, pink and lavender and blue. Oh, I am so glad that you have come to stay!’

And Sally squeezed Alice’s arm so violently in her gladness that Jack Tar was only just saved from a tumble to the street.

Once home, Mother went over the way to call on Miss Neppy and to meet Alice’s mother, she said.

So Sally with Nancy Lee, and Alice with Jack Tar walked up and down and up and down the street.

Aunt Bee passed by on her way home from market, and stopped to hear all that had happened that day.

She learned of Tippy’s wrongdoing, of poor Tilly Maud’s fate. She admired Jack Tar and[36] agreed that he might be turned into a girl at a moment’s notice, and without the least harm to his feelings, too.

‘Really the most boyish thing about him is his hair,’ said Aunt Bee. ‘And if he wore a little cap or a ribbon I don’t believe Captain Ball himself could tell whether he were Jack Tar or Nancy Lee.’

‘But I like him to be a boy,’ said Alice. ‘I like a boy baby and a boy doll just as well as girls.’

‘And so do I,’ said agreeable Aunt Bee.

Presently the dolls grew sleepy, or so their mothers said, and down on the doorstep, now dry in the sun, sat Sally and Alice, to give the children a nap.

‘There is Buff,’ said Sally in a low voice, ‘up on the window-sill asleep in the sun.’

‘I wonder where Tippy is,’ inquired Alice, whose tender heart held no wrath against Tip, especially now that little Jack Tar lay sleeping in her lap.

‘I wonder, too,’ said Sally.

[37]‘Tippy! Tippy!’ she called softly.

There was no answer. Tippy did not hear. So putting Nancy Lee down on the edge of Alice’s dress, Sally tiptoed off round the corner of the house.

Alice heard her calling, ‘Tippy! Tippy! Tip!’

But back came Sally, shaking her yellow head.

‘He isn’t anywhere. He doesn’t answer,’ said she. ‘I wonder what Mother will say when she comes home.’

What Mother said was that she thought Tippy was probably taking a nap.

‘Or else he has gone off to play somewhere,’ said she. ‘He knows he was a naughty dog. He will be back at dinner time. Wait and see.’

But the long day passed and still Tippy did not come.

Father came home, dinner was over, bedtime drew near.

‘Do you think he is lost, Father?’ asked Sally for at least the tenth time.

[38]‘No, I don’t think he is lost,’ answered Father patiently. ‘I think he will come home again.’

‘What do you think, Mother?’ asked Sally, as Mother at last tucked her in bed. ‘I don’t feel as if I could go to sleep and not know where Tippy is. Mayn’t I stay up and watch for him, Mother?’

But at this idea Mother shook her head.

‘Set your little white dove to watch for him,’ suggested she. ‘He can see so far up the street that he would know the moment Tippy turned the corner.’

‘I will,’ said Sally, springing out of bed. ‘I am glad you thought of that, Mother.’

‘Now, Snow White,’ said Sally in the window, for so she had named her little white bird, ‘you watch for Tippy, and when you see him you give the loudest Squawk! you can to wake me up. Will you do that, Snow White? Do you promise?’

And to her great delight the dove winked his[39] shining black eyes and nodded his little white head.

‘At least I think he did,’ said Sally to Mother, as she climbed back into bed.

Mother was quite right in saying that Tippy knew he had been a naughty little dog. When he rolled his eye up at the porch and saw Mother with the broom in her hand, Tippy knew that it was time for him to drop Tilly Maud and to keep out of sight for a while.

So with a jump, and a whirl, and a push through the hedge Tippy dashed across Aunt Bee’s garden, round the corner, and up the narrow, crooked street.

Tippy felt lively this morning, as we already know. The wind blew his ears back flat against his head. His glistening little black nose smelled all kinds of sweet odors—flower gardens, wet grass, damp sticks and leaves. His shining brown eyes saw many sights—puddles, and men, a lady or two, birds catching worms, a butcher’s boy, with a basket, whistling a tune.

[41]Though the ground was wet and the sky was still gray, to Tippy it was the gayest kind of a morning.

‘I could run and run and run forever,’ said Tippy to himself.

And that is just what he did do, run and run and run, until at last, when Tippy stopped to draw a long breath, he stood in a strange street where he had never been before. He didn’t know in the least where he was nor how to get home to Sally’s house again.

But Tippy didn’t mean to go home for a long, long while. He meant to stay away until Sally had forgotten all about Tilly Maud or until he had forgotten about Tilly Maud himself.

At any rate he meant to stay just where he was until he found out what was the matter with the little boy who at this moment flung open the door of the house before which Tippy was standing and ran with a scream straight down the path to the street.

[42]The little boy’s face was red and he flung his arms about as he ran, and when he reached the street he turned around and ran right back to the porch steps again. There he jumped up and down, screaming all the while, and ran his fingers through his hair until it stood out all round about his head.

This was a tantrum, Tippy knew, because Sally sometimes had them, just like this. She, too, screamed and jumped up and down and even ran her fingers through her hair.

‘I shan’t leave here until I find out what this tantrum is about,’ thought curious little Tip.

And slowly, very slowly, he crept through the half-open gate and over the grass toward the wide porch steps.

Now the little boy’s mother had come out to him, and in the doorway, half hiding behind the door, there stood a tall, tall man.

‘Andy, stop crying and let me speak to you,’ said the little boy’s mother.

But Andy only screamed the louder and began to whirl himself round like a top.

[43]‘Oh, Andy, stop, stop,’ said the little boy’s mother again. ‘Oh, what shall I do with you?’

Tippy knew very well what Sally’s mother would have done, but he wouldn’t have told, if he could. He didn’t want to see Andy whisked off to bed, even though it would have cured the tantrum in a trice.

But just then Andy found his voice.

‘I won’t be sick!’ shouted Andy, still flinging his arms about. ‘I won’t go to bed! I won’t take medicine! I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!’

When he heard this, the man behind the door poked his head out and spoke to Andy’s mother.

‘Tell him he won’t have to go to bed,’ he called in a loud voice. ‘Tell him that he won’t have to take medicine, and that he won’t be sick.’

‘There, Andy, listen to what the Doctor says,’ said Andy’s mother. ‘You won’t have to go to bed, you won’t have to take medicine, and you won’t be sick.’

[44]At this good news Andy stood still and stopped screaming.

In the quiet the Doctor called again, ‘Keep him away from other children for a few days and tell him to forget that he has chicken-pox. Tell him to play with that nice little dog standing there at his feet.’

Then the Doctor disappeared, and Andy’s mother followed him into the house.

Andy looked down at Tippy and Tippy looked up at Andy, and that is how Andy and Tippy knew one another.

Next, Andy sat down on the steps, and after Tippy had barked two or three times just to show that he was friendly, he snuggled up close to Andy’s side.

‘Good doggie!’ said Andy, patting Tip. ‘Good doggie! Good dog!’

This was very pleasant for Tip to hear. Sally surely would not call him ‘good doggie’ this morning, if he were at home.

So wagging his tail as hard as ever he could,[45] Tip made up his mind that he would pay Andy a little visit.

‘I won’t stay too long,’ thought Tip to himself, ‘just long enough to make Sally glad to see me when I do go home.’

Now Tippy meant only to spend the afternoon. He didn’t have a notion, I am sure, of staying all night and sleeping out of his little basket, lined with a shawl, that stood on Sally’s back porch. If you had told him that it would be four whole days before he would see Sally’s friendly, rosy little face again, he would have been the most surprised little brown dog that ever wagged a tail.

But this is how it happened. To begin with, as they sat on the porch steps, Andy told Tippy why he had had a tantrum. And when Tip knew all about it, he wagged his tail and looked up into Andy’s face as if he would say that really you could scarcely blame Andy after all.

‘We came here to the country yesterday,’ said Andy, gently pulling Tip’s ears, ‘and I[46] have a pail and shovel, and a bathing-suit, blue-and-white. I am all ready to play and dig in the sand. Mother and I were going down to the beach this morning the very first thing. But when I woke up I was covered with little red spots like this.’

Sure enough, there were the red spots, ever so many of them. Andy eyed them rather proudly and then went on with his story.

‘So Mother sent for the doctor, and when he said I had chicken-pox I just couldn’t stand going to bed now when I want to play. But if I don’t have to go to bed you and I can have some fun together, Bounce. I am going to call you Bounce. Perhaps we can go to the beach. Let’s go and ask Mother. Here, Bounce! Here, Bounce!’

And Andy and Tip, who didn’t at all mind being called Bounce, ran into the house to see whether they might not go down to the beach.

But though Andy need not go to bed and might play as much as he wished all day long he[47] was not permitted to leave his own front yard. And as Andy would not allow Tippy out of his sight, it followed that Tippy was forced to stay inside the front yard, too. There was a tall, white fence all about the yard, over which Tippy could not jump, and at night he slept on the floor beside Andy’s bed.

He did not forget Sally. Oh, no! But the days slipped by as he romped and played and tumbled about with Andy, who would never have known that he was ill with chicken-pox if it had not been for the little red spots.

But now the red spots were disappearing fast, and one morning Andy’s mother, whose name was Mrs. Thomas, said that Andy might leave the front yard and go down into the town with her if he liked.

‘And Bounce? Bounce must come, too.’

So Bounce, or Tippy, was fastened to a string, and pulling and tugging in a way that made Andy run far more than he walked, the little brown dog led the way down into the town. For[48] as soon as Tippy had walked along a street or two, he knew where he was and felt at home. And the farther they walked and the nearer they drew to Sally’s house, the more at home he felt. Until, as Andy and his mother and Tip were walking through a quiet, narrow little street, Tip began to run and jump and pull at his string so that Andy could scarcely hold him back. Then, suddenly, he halted, with a jerk, before a gray house that stood on the side of the hill in the midst of a gay flower garden, and opened his mouth in the loudest, sharpest bark that Andy had ever heard him give.

‘I have come home,’ is what Tippy’s bark said, though no one understood him at the time.

And the next moment Tippy was racing around the house to the back porch and then to the front of the house again, barking all the while.

‘It is Tippy! It is Tippy come home! Mother, here is Tippy come home!’ cried Sally, flinging open the front door and darting down the steps[49] only to bump into Andy, who had run all the way round the house after Tip, as fast as he could run.

But Sally was too excited to notice a bump. She sat flat on the ground and took Tip into her lap for one great hug. Tilly Maud was completely forgotten. No one gave her a thought.

Then Sally stood up and looked at Andy, and Andy looked at her, while Tip jumped about and barked and rushed at Sally to lick her hands and then at Andy to lick his hands.

‘I do hope you will be friends,’ was what Tippy’s face said as he jumped from one to the other and barked and barked again.

Sally didn’t understand it. She only knew that Tip had come home. Andy didn’t understand it. He only saw that the little brown dog, of whom he was so fond, now found himself among old friends.

But as Mrs. Waters and Mrs. Thomas talked together, they understood what had happened without any trouble at all.

[50]Poor Andy! His face grew doleful as his mother explained that Tip was Sally’s dog. He winked and blinked and swallowed hard.

But a moment later he was able to say quite cheerfully, ‘Anyway, my spots are gone and I am going to the beach this afternoon.’

‘So am I,’ cried Sally, ‘so am I. Mother said so. Didn’t you, Mother? Bring your pail, Andy, and we will dig together in the sand.’

‘I will. I will bring my pail and shovel,’ promised Andy.

‘Perhaps Tippy will come with us, too,’ called Sally, as Andy and his mother started down the path.

And from the back garden, where he was joyfully digging up an old bone, Tippy answered for himself.

‘Bow-wow-wow!’ said Tippy.

Tippy did not go to the beach that afternoon, but Sally and Alice did.

And no sooner were their shoes and stockings taken off and they were comfortably settled in a pleasant place to dig, than along came Andy, with such a happy, smiling face that it made Sally and Alice smile, too, only to look at him.

No wonder Andy was happy, for not only did he carry a gay blue pail and shovel, but in his arms he bore a sail-boat, a brand-new sail-boat, fresh from Captain Ball’s shop not half an hour ago.

‘I am late,’ said Andy, smiling the broadest kind of a smile. ‘I am late because we went to a funny little shop to buy my boat. Isn’t she a beauty? Did you ever see a boat like her before?’

[52]‘She came from Captain Ball’s, didn’t she?’ asked Sally. ‘I know she did.’

While Alice, not waiting for Andy’s nod, spoke up.

‘My doll, Jack Tar, came from Captain Ball’s, too.’

‘Isn’t she a beauty?’ asked Andy again. ‘Here is her name, painted on the side, just like a real boat. “The Mermaid” she is called, and I know what a mermaid is, too. Mother told me.’

‘So do I,’ said Sally proudly. ‘They are little girls and their mothers who live under the ocean, and they have tails like fish. They swim and dive and play in the water all day long.’

‘They are very pretty, too,’ added Andy. ‘Mother said so. They wear necklaces of shells and coral, and they have long hair twined with seaweed. Their eyes are green like the sea, and their arms are very white.’

‘Did you ever see a mermaid?’ asked Alice. ‘Do they ever come out of the sea?’

[53]Sally shook her head doubtfully.

‘I never saw one,’ she admitted, ‘but perhaps Father has. He has seen everything. And I don’t think mermaids ever come out of the water, because fish never do, if they can help it, and mermaids have tails like fish.’

This satisfied Alice, but Andy had a question to ask.

‘Aren’t there any little boy mermaids like me?’ asked Andy.

‘There are men,’ said Sally, ‘mermen, you call them, but nobody seems to think much about them. Let’s sail your boat, Andy. Have you a string?’

Indeed, Andy had a string, a long one, tied to the bow of ‘The Mermaid,’ and presently the children were running up and down the beach, the gay little boat sailing bravely along, dipping and bobbing about in the waves for all the world like the big boats anchored near by.

‘The Mermaid’ was a bright little red-and-white sail-boat, with her name standing out[54] strongly in green. The Captain liked gay colors, you see, and so did the little boys who bought his boats. Andy was sure that he had never seen a prettier sight than his little sail-boat dancing on the waves, and he sat alone near the edge of the water letting ‘The Mermaid’ drift in and out long after the little girls had gone back to their sand-digging farther up the beach.

But Andy knew how to dig fully as well as he knew how to sail a boat. He flourished his blue shovel and fell to work with a will when he joined Sally and Alice, who sat cool and comfortable in the shade of the great lighthouse, that towered up and up into the air high above their heads.

They heaped sand piles, they dug deep holes, they built a fort. They made pies and cakes and loaves of bread, enough to stock a bake-shop.

‘We ought to have more brown bread,’ said Alice, who found that by packing her pail with sand and turning it upside-down she made as[55] nice a loaf of bread as could be bought in Boston town.

‘I will make cakes,’ decided Sally, ‘because I like to mark them with a shell. When we have made one more row we will call your mother and Andy’s mother and my mother to come and buy. Shall we?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Alice, beating on the bottom of her pail and turning out a fresh loaf of brown bread with pride.

But Andy shook his head.

‘I’m tired of working,’ said Andy. ‘I want to sail my boat again.’

So off went Andy to launch ‘The Mermaid’ once more, and this time he ran with her far, far up the beach.

The waves came rolling in, and Andy laughed and dodged the spray. The white sails of ‘The Mermaid’ sparkled in the sunlight and the gay red-and-white hull twinkled in and out among the tumbling waves. It was all so pleasant. The sand was smooth and hard. It felt cool to[56] Andy’s bare pink toes. He ran faster and faster and behind him on her string danced ‘The Mermaid.’

Faster, faster, faster ran Andy, and then suddenly, bump! went his toe against a great round pebble, out of his hand jerked the string, and down went Andy on his hands and knees.

He was up in a minute. Of course he didn’t cry. But, oh! oh! out on the waves sailed the beautiful ‘Mermaid,’ her long string streaming behind her in the wind.

‘My boat! My boat!’ shouted Andy, and started into the water after his ship.

But the waves rolled in so high and so fast that he ran back on the beach.

‘Come back! Come back!’ he called, dancing up and down and waving his arms about. ‘Come back, “Mermaid,” come back!’

It seemed for a moment as if ‘The Mermaid’ had heard Andy’s frantic call. A great wave bore her nearer and nearer the shore. But just as Andy ran forward, his hand outstretched to[57] grasp the string, back rolled the great wave carrying ‘The Mermaid’ with it out of reach.

Poor Andy! His eyes grew large with dismay as ‘The Mermaid’ slowly drifted farther and farther from the shore. She looked so tiny, a gay little red-and-white dot bobbing about on the sunny sea.

A lump came into Andy’s throat. He stamped his foot, but he did not cry.

Farther and farther away floated ‘The Mermaid.’ Now a wave would hide her from sight, now she would rise, gleaming red-and-white, only to sink from view again.

‘Good-bye,’ called Andy, the lump in his throat so big he could scarcely speak. ‘Good-bye, “Mermaid,” good-bye.’

And, then, I almost think Andy would have cried if, quite unexpectedly, out of the green waves, there had not risen a snow-white arm, that caught the dancing little ship and held it firmly by the string.

Andy stared and blinked and stared again.

[58]Yes, it was a snow-white arm—he was not dreaming—and it held ‘The Mermaid’ fast. And the snow-white arm belonged to some one dressed in green, who no sooner caught sight of Andy standing on the beach than, stroke by stroke, she came swimming slowly toward him.

Where had she come from? Who could she be?

Then, in a flash, Andy knew.

It was a Mermaid, a kind, thoughtful Mermaid, rising from her home under the sea to bring back his little ship to him again.

Nearer swam the Mermaid, stroke by stroke. Nearer danced the little boat, growing more beautiful, more red-and-white-and-green with every wave. And brighter grew Andy’s face until, when he and the Mermaid were near enough to look into one another’s eyes, Andy wore a smile as bright as the glowing sun that shone above them in the sky.

When the Mermaid saw Andy’s smile, she smiled, too—a lovely smile, Andy thought—and[59] waved a white hand to him in greeting.

She was now so near shore that she was halfway out of the water, and Andy could see that she was a green Mermaid, just the color a mermaid should be, of course, with a little green cap that fitted tightly over her head. Andy didn’t notice whether or not she wore a string of shells about her neck, and of course he couldn’t see her tail because she was in the water up to her waist.

‘Is this your boat, little boy?’ called the Mermaid.

She had a sweet voice, as soft as the rush of waves on the shore in the early morning, and when she shook the water from her eyes it fell all round about in silver drops as water would do for no one but a mermaid, Andy felt sure.

‘Yes, it is my boat,’ answered Andy, finding his voice at last. ‘I fell down and dropped the string and she floated away.’

‘I thought it was yours,’ said the Mermaid. ‘She is a beautiful boat.’

[60]And with a strong push the Mermaid sent the little boat sailing toward Andy and up on the beach at his feet.

She waited until Andy held the boat in his arms. Then with a farewell smile the Mermaid turned and swam swiftly away.

‘Thank you,’ called Andy, remembering his manners, ‘thank you, Mermaid.’

A wave from a white, white hand was his only answer, and in a moment the little green cap was lost to Andy’s sight in the moving green water.

‘She has gone down home to tell the little mermaids about it,’ thought he. ‘I must go and tell Mother and Sally and all of them about it, too.’

Sally and Alice, surrounded by loaves of Boston brown bread, by pies and cakes, were slowly putting on their shoes and stockings when Andy, hot and out of breath, came running toward them.

‘Oh! Oh!’ gasped Andy, sitting down hard[61] upon the sand. ‘I have seen a mermaid. She saved my boat.’

That was the way Andy began his story.

And when he had finished he said it over again.

‘I have seen a mermaid, all but her tail,’ said Andy.

‘Oh, I do wish I could have seen her tail,’ said he.

Sally sat out in the back garden making mud pies.

‘Sand pies are cleanest,’ said Sally, ‘but mud pies are rich.’

Indeed, they were rich-looking pies that Sally had spread on a board before her in the sun. Some of them were ornamented with tiny white pebbles, some of them were crimped round the edges like a real crusty pie. But all of them were as smooth as patting could make them, because patting was the part of mud-pie making that Sally liked best of all.

‘I like to mix and I like to stir,’ said Sally, ‘but, oh! I love to pat.’

This morning it looked as if Sally had done a great deal of patting. Her hands were black and sticky and her romper was well spattered all up and down the front.

[63]But how could Sally help this when she was stirring up a great bowlful of thick brown mud?

‘I will make a big cake, I think, for Paulina,’ decided Sally. ‘Perhaps it will be a birthday cake with little sticks for candles.’

So round and round in the battered bowl went the old tin spoon, and out of Sally’s little blue watering-can came the water in a lively shower. Sally stirred and stirred and added more dirt.

‘It is too thin,’ said Cook Sally. ‘It is like jelly. I shall have to dig more dirt from this hole.’

But before Sally could even turn round she heard Mother’s voice calling.

‘Sally! Sally!’

Down went the spoon and up rose Sally. It was too bad to be interrupted, but when Mother called there was nothing to do but to go.

‘Well, Cooky!’ said Mother from the back porch steps. ‘You do look like black Dinah.’

For by this time there were smudges of mud on Sally’s cheeks and even on the tip of her nose.

[64]‘It is a birthday cake for Paulina,’ explained Sally. ‘Mother, would you put pebbles on it for trimming or candles of little sticks?’

‘You won’t have time to make the cake this morning, Sally,’ said Mother. ‘You know I am going to have company at luncheon, and you must be washed and dressed at once.’

Yes, Sally remembered that Mother had told her of the two friends who were coming from the city to-day to have luncheon with Mother and Aunt Bee. Sally herself was to sit at the table and was to be ‘as quiet as a mouse and as polite as a lady.’

Those were Mother’s own words, and Sally meant to do just what Mother said.

‘What dress am I to wear?’ asked Sally, as scrubbed and brushed, she stood waiting for Mother to slip her frock over her head.

‘It really doesn’t matter what dress you wear, answered Mother, stepping into Sally’s closet, ‘so long as you yourself are clean and good.’

‘If it doesn’t matter, then,’ replied Sally, ‘I[65] think I should like to wear my new white dress. I think it is the very prettiest dress I have ever seen.’

So Mother, laughing, Sally didn’t quite know why, put on the new white dress, and Sally soon settled herself on the back steps to wait for the guests to arrive.

Mother and Aunt Bee were going to the train to meet them, and Sally was to take care of the house until they came home again.

‘But I will lock the doors,’ said Mother, ‘so that you won’t have to think of the house. Then, if you grow tired of sitting on the steps, you may go and swing, if you like. But keep yourself clean, Sally,’ said Mother, in a warning voice, ‘keep yourself clean.’

‘I will,’ promised Sally earnestly, ‘I will.’

So Mother and Aunt Bee, who, like Sally, was dressed in a pretty new white frock, rode away in Aunt Bee’s little car, and for a long time, perhaps as much as two minutes, Sally sat still on the steps.

[66]Then she stood up and practiced making a curtsy.

‘This is the way I will do when the ladies come,’ said she.

She sat down again and wished that the door were open, so that she might bring Paulina out to hold on her lap and talk to her for a while.

‘I could tell her about the birthday cake,’ thought Sally. ‘Oh, I wish I could get in the house and bring her out.’

Sally stood up and pulled at the screen door. It was firmly hooked, and the wooden door behind it was locked, Sally knew.

‘The front door is locked, I am sure,’ said she to herself. ‘What shall I do? I know. I will just walk down and look at my pies. I won’t touch them, not even with my little finger, for Mother said to keep clean. But it can’t do any harm to look at the pies, can it? Just to look at them, you know.’

Oh, Sally, Sally! If only the big brown-and-gold bumble bee, humming over the roses, could[67] have droned, ‘Sally, keep away from those mud pies.’ If only the birds, flying high in the sky, could have chirped, ‘Sally, keep away from those mud pies.’ If only Snow White, Sally’s little wooden dove, could have warned her away. But Snow White was fastened to Sally’s window-sill in the front of the house, so of course he couldn’t know what Sally was about. And Buff was asleep on the window-sill, and Tippy was tied in Aunt Bee’s cellar. There was really no one to keep Sally away from those mud pies.

So off ran Sally to the end of the garden, where, baking in the sun, lay her row of pies.

Sally counted them.

‘There are four big pies,’ counted Sally, ‘and five little ones, and two crooked little cakes that I must make over again to-morrow, if I can.’

Next, daintily holding back her white skirts, Sally stepped over toward her bowl and spoon and watering-can that were lying where she had left them when Mother called.

[68]‘How I would love to stir this jelly round just once,’ said Sally, looking longingly at the big bowl of soft, brown mud. ‘But I don’t suppose I ought.’

Slowly Sally stretched out her hand toward the spoon, but at that moment a large and hungry mosquito lighted on the back of Sally’s neck.

‘Oh!’ cried she, and gave a little jump.

Poor Sally! If she had jumped to the right or to the left or even backward, nothing would have happened at all. But instead of that, Sally jumped forward. She stepped on the spoon, it turned over under her foot, and down she went with a splash! right into the bowlful of soft, brown ‘jelly.’

‘Mother!’ cried Sally in a piteous voice, ‘Mother!’ and struggled to her feet.

Mother was far away, Sally well knew, but who else was there to save her from this dreadful plight?

The new white dress was covered with mud,[69] wet and soft black mud. Muddy were Sally’s shoes and stockings, muddy were her knees.

Sally looked at herself in dismay. Then she began to cry. She put her hands up to her face, she cried and rubbed, she rubbed and cried.

And when Sally put her hands down, you could call her nothing but a black-a-moor. Instead of a pink-and-white little girl, dressed in a fresh white frock, there stood in Sally’s back garden a black child, only faintly streaked with white, who stood first on one foot and then on the other, because she simply didn’t know what else to do.

Where could she go? Who would help her? What would the company think? And what, oh! what, would Mother say?

At the thought of Mother, Sally fairly danced up and down.

‘Oh! Oh!’ wailed Sally, remembering how Mother had told her to be ‘as quiet as a mouse and as polite as a lady.’ ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’

How could a wet, uncomfortable black-a-moor[70] be ‘as quiet as a mouse and as polite as a lady’? It simply couldn’t be done.

I really do not know what would have happened next if, just then, Sally had not heard some one unlocking the back door.

Then came Mother’s voice calling, ‘Sally! Sally!’

Sally didn’t stir. She was hidden from the house by a great forsythia bush, whose branches, long and slender, trailed upon the ground.

Mother called once more and then went into the house.

Presently, out came Aunt Bee, in her pretty white frock, looking for Sally.

She walked down to the swing: no Sally there. She stood still and looked about her. Sally made herself as small as ever she could. But did Aunt Bee catch a glimpse of her behind the bush?

At any rate, Aunt Bee turned and came straight toward Sally. And what do you think Sally did? Down on the ground she went in a[71] little heap and crawled under the forsythia bush. There she rolled herself into a ball and waited.

Nearer came Aunt Bee, nearer and nearer, until she reached the bush. Sally could feel her stop and look at the mud pies in a row, at the overturned bowl, at the great muddy spot in the grass.

Then Aunt Bee stooped and looked under the bush. For a long time she didn’t say a word, and Sally kept her head down and her eyes shut tight.

At last Sally opened one eye. She stole a glance at Aunt Bee. Aunt Bee’s face was very red, and Sally couldn’t tell whether she were going to laugh or to cry.

Either way it would be dreadful. It would break Sally’s heart to make Aunt Bee cry, but she simply couldn’t bear it if Aunt Bee should laugh at her when she was in such trouble. So Sally herself began to cry again. It was the only thing she could think of to do.

[72]Then Aunt Bee spoke. She was neither laughing nor crying, and her voice was very gentle indeed.

‘Sally, don’t cry,’ she whispered, ‘don’t let Mother hear you cry. She is going to have such a nice party to-day. You and I will slip into the house. We won’t let any one see us. And I will put clean clothes on you as fast as I can. Come, Sally, come!’

Aunt Bee held out her hand with such a sweet, inviting smile that Sally, miserable as she was, scrambled out from under the bush and hurried on tiptoe after Aunt Bee into the house.

Up the back stairs they went as quiet as could be. Mother and her friends, talking busily together, did not hear them at all. And once safely upstairs, Aunt Bee’s fingers were so nimble and Sally stood so still that, in less time than you might think, she was turned from a black-a-moor into a pink-and-white little girl again.

Mother opened her eyes in surprise when[73] Sally came walking into the room wearing a pink frock instead of the new white dress, but she didn’t ask any questions, not a single one.

So Sally made her curtsy, as she had planned to do. And at the luncheon table she was ‘as quiet as a mouse and as polite as a lady,’ just as Mother had said.

When the party was over and the guests were gone, Sally sat on Mother’s lap and told her all about it.

‘I felt dreadfully to spoil my new white dress, Mother,’ said Sally, when the story was ended. ‘But I remembered what you said, that it didn’t matter what dress I wore so long as I was clean and good.’

‘Do you know who I think was good to-day?’ asked Mother, looking down into Sally’s upturned face. ‘Some one who was ready for a party in her new white frock, and yet who washed and dressed a muddy little girl so that she might come to the party, too.’

[74]‘Aunt Bee,’ said Sally quickly, ‘Aunt Bee. She was good. She was the best in the world.’

‘I think so,’ said Mother.

‘And so do I,’ said Sally.

Sally was planning a present for Aunt Bee.

‘I want to give Aunt Bee a present because she is so good,’ said Sally, ‘but I haven’t anything to give. I could give her my blue handkerchief, I suppose, only it has washed almost white. Or perhaps I might give her the little thimble in my workbox, because I don’t like to sew very well. Do you think she would like my thimble for a present, Mother? Tell me what you think.’

‘I don’t believe your thimble would fit Aunt Bee’s finger,’ was Mother’s answer.

‘I wish I could sell papers like little boys in the city,’ said Sally next. ‘Then I would have pennies, more than I could count. But I can’t do anything at all, and I do want to give a present to my Aunt Bee.’

[76]‘Why, yes, you can do something, Sally,’ said Mother, with a smile. ‘You can sweep. You know how you like to sweep with your little broom. Now every day that you sweep the doorstep clean, I will give you a penny for it. Don’t you think you could do that?’

‘Will you really give me a penny?’ asked Sally, hopping about for joy. ‘Will you, Mother? I will sweep the doorstep as clean as a pin. I will sweep it this very minute, too. Only, will it be a new penny?’ asked Sally, who liked shining gold ones far better than dingy brown.

‘If I can find a new one in my purse every day,’ was Mother’s answer.

So Sally ran for her little broom, and never before had the old doorstep known such a sweeping as Sally gave it that day.

Fortunately, Mother had a new penny with which to pay Sally, and the shining little coin was carefully put away in a small silver box that stood on Father’s desk.

[77]Evening came and Sally went down to the corner to watch for Father.

‘It is for a present for Aunt Bee,’ said Sally, as, walking up the street, she told him all about earning the penny. ‘But will I grow rich very fast, do you think, on a penny a day?’

‘Not very fast,’ answered Father, ‘but couldn’t you do some work for me, besides?’

‘Oh, I could,’ said Sally, squeezing Father’s hand very tight. ‘What can I do, Father? What can I do for you?’

‘Well,’ said Father thoughtfully, standing now in the doorway and looking down the flagged path to the street, ‘it seems to me that Tony always forgets the weeds among the flowers along either side of this walk. If you think you could pull them out, I will give you ten cents toward Aunt Bee’s present.’

‘Oh, Father, Father!’ cried Sally, swinging joyfully on Father’s hand, ‘shall I begin now? Shall I get down before dinner and begin to pull the weeds?’

[78]‘Wait until to-morrow morning,’ suggested Father.

And as Mother thought so, too, Sally was forced to wait.

But she was up in the morning early, and after a brisk sweeping of the doorstep, down went Sally on her hands and knees to pull out weeds with all her might and main.

Off and on Sally weeded nearly all morning. Then she swept the doorstep again and proudly dropped her third bright penny into the silver box.

‘I am growing rich fast,’ said Sally.

And so it seemed when she shook the silver box and the three gold pennies rattled gayly about inside.

The next day Sally was so busy about other matters—Alice came to play and Mother had company in the afternoon—that she was able to sweep the doorstep only once. But she finished her weeding, and that night Father gave her a new ten-cent piece, the brightest[79] ever sent out from the Mint, or so, at least, Father said.

In the evening, Sally placed her money in a row and counted her riches over and over again.

‘Ten cents and four cents make fourteen cents.’

It grew to be almost a chant, Sally said it so many times.

‘To-morrow morning I will sweep the doorstep again and earn another penny,’ said she. ‘That will make fifteen cents, and fifteen cents is enough to buy anybody a present, I think.’

The next morning a final sweeping of the doorway brought the sum up to fifteen cents. So Mother and Sally, as happy as could be, started off for a shopping trip in town.

Going to town was different from going to the city. A trip to the city meant a ride on the train, rather a long ride, and a home-coming so late that after supper you must go straight to bed. But going to town was only stepping on a[80] bus and whirling over a country road into town, all in the space of ten minutes or so.

Mother had a few errands to do, and Sally liked shopping so well that she did not grow at all tired of watching Mother select blue-and-white wool to knit ‘perhaps a scarf or a sweater,’ she was told. Mother bought buttons, too, and thread, and a new pair of shears, sharp and shiny.

Then her errands were done, and it was time for Sally to select her present for Aunt Bee.

‘Hadn’t I better go to the Five and Ten Cent Store?’ whispered Sally, who well knew how many delightful articles might be purchased for very little money in a scarlet-and-gold Five and Ten Cent Store.

Indeed, once inside the store, there were so many objects that Sally was sure Aunt Bee would like, that it was really a difficult matter for her to make her choice.

Mother was patient and allowed Sally to wander about as long as she wished, and at last her choice was made.

[81]‘Will Aunt Bee like these, do you think?’ asked Sally, smiling upon her purchases with pride.

And Mother, carefully looking them over, answered, ‘Yes, I think she will.’

‘You see,’ explained Sally, ‘I bought this little duck for five cents because I thought he would look pretty floating in Aunt Bee’s white glass flower bowl. He can sail under the flowers, you know, and in and out of the stems.

‘And this little pink baby is made of soap. Would you ever think it, Mother? It looks just like a real baby to me. I thought Uncle Paul would like to see it smiling at him when he comes home at night and washes his hands. He so often wishes that he had a little girl like me, and a baby is much nicer than a little girl, I think.’

Yes, Mother agreed with Sally that Uncle Paul could not fail to like this present.

‘The soap baby cost five cents, and that left me another five cents,’ went on Sally. ‘So I[82] bought this big, thick stick of pink-and-white peppermint candy, all wrapped up in shiny paper, too. Aunt Bee likes peppermints. She almost always can find one for me when I go over to see her.

‘Are we going straight home now, Mother? I want to give my presents to Aunt Bee as soon as ever I can.’

So the moment Sally reached home, she ran over to Aunt Bee’s with her hands full of presents. And never was any one more surprised than Aunt Bee when the parcels were tumbled into her lap and she was told that they were all for her.

‘Open them, open them,’ cried Sally, ‘and tell me which you like the best. I think they are all pretty, the prettiest presents I ever saw.’

When Aunt Bee untied the string—bright green string, Sally was glad of that—and took off the paper, she thought just as Sally did, that they were the prettiest presents she had ever seen.

[83]‘You must put the duck in the water, Sally,’ said she, leading the way into the house.

So Sally did. And away floated Master Duck under the pink roses, looking as much at home as if he had spent all his days in Aunt Bee’s white glass bowl.

‘Let us go upstairs and stand the soap baby where Uncle Paul will see him the first thing to-night,’ said Aunt Bee next. ‘Do you mean him to wash his hands with the baby, or is he only to stand and smile at Uncle Paul?’

Sally placed the pink baby on the edge of the wash-basin where Uncle Paul would be sure to see him.

‘I think,’ said Sally thoughtfully, ‘that to-morrow he may wash his hands with the baby, but that the baby ought only to smile at him to-night.’

‘I think so, too,’ agreed Aunt Bee. ‘Now suppose we go down on the porch and break the peppermint stick and eat it.’

‘Oh,’ said Sally, ‘wouldn’t that be nice?’

[84]So Sally and Aunt Bee sat down to a little feast which was very refreshing to a person who had spent the morning shopping in town.

‘Isn’t it good candy?’ said Aunt Bee, passing it to Sally again.

‘Yes, it is good,’ answered Sally, carefully choosing a piece not too small. ‘Which one of your presents do you think you like best, Aunt Bee?’

‘All of them,’ said Aunt Bee promptly. ‘I like all three of them best.’

‘I don’t,’ said Sally, ‘I think the peppermint candy is the best present of all.’

Father and Sally, Andy and Alice, were spending a morning down on the rocks.

The tide was out, and the jagged, uneven, rocky shore lay brown and dry under the hot summer sun. Soon the tide would turn and roll in again, dashing up higher and higher over the rocks until every one would be forced to run farther inland to escape the wash of the waves and the dashing spray.

But now the rocks were well out of water, and over them climbed Sally and Alice and Andy, hunting for treasures that the sea had left behind in little pools and hollows everywhere.

‘Here is seaweed,’ called Sally, holding up the long, wet, brown strands. ‘It is what the mermaids wear in their hair, Andy, you know.’

‘I don’t think my mermaid wore any,’ answered[86] Andy, who still liked to tell the story of how his mermaid, as he called her, had saved his boat, ‘but then her green cap was very tight and I couldn’t see her hair. Oh, Sally, Sally, what is this?’

Andy was dancing about a little pool as he pointed to something on its edge, as excited as if he saw another mermaid rising from its clear and shallow depths.

‘It is a crab,’ said Sally, laughing at Andy’s puzzled face, ‘a baby crab. See him run.’

And Andy and Sally laughed happily together as the little crab scuttled hastily away out of sight.

‘These are periwinkles,’ explained Sally, as she came upon Alice gingerly poking with a stick a number of small gray shells. ‘That shell is a house, and the periwinkle lives inside. When he goes walking he carries his house on his back.’

‘Sit very still for a moment,’ said Father, who had come up behind the little group, ‘and perhaps[87] you will see the periwinkles walking away.’

Sure enough, while Sally and Andy and Alice waited, scarcely winking an eyelash nor drawing a long breath, the procession moved slowly off, each periwinkle carrying his little gray house that did not look unlike the gray houses of Seabury Town itself.

‘If they were walking in the sand, each one would leave a little track, wouldn’t he, Father?’ said Sally, blowing upon the slowly moving houses as if to make their tenants hurry along.

‘I shouldn’t like to live all alone in a house,’ said Andy. ‘I shouldn’t like it at night.’

And Andy shook his head as he thought of his own little crib standing close beside his mother’s big bed.

‘Poor little periwinkle,’ said tender-hearted Alice. ‘Do you think he is ever lonely?’

‘No, indeed,’ answered Father. ‘See him walking off with his family now. He will tell every one he meets what an exciting morning he has had, how one little girl rapped on the[88] roof of his house with a stick and another one blew on him until it almost gave him a cold in his head. Perhaps the periwinkles will give a party to-night and invite the crabs to come and hear all about it.’

This made every one laugh, and Sally asked, ‘What will they eat at the party?’

‘Jelly,’ answered Father promptly, ‘made by the jellyfish, of course.’

‘Oh, show us the jellyfish,’ cried Sally, jumping about on the rocks until it seemed as if she must tumble down. ‘Show us the jellyfish, Father.’

So Father led the way in the search for jellyfish, and when they were found, lying in pools of water here and there, it was seen at once that they had been well named.

‘They do look just like jelly,’ said Alice, ‘raspberry jelly, I think.’

‘But jelly doesn’t have “stingers,”’ objected Sally, keeping a respectful distance from the jellyfish’s long, waving ‘arms,’ that would[89] ‘sting like a bee,’ she told her friends, if they went too near.

‘Here is a sea anemone,’ said Father, pointing to a rose-colored, star-shaped form lying in a pool.

‘It looks like a flower,’ said Alice.

And so it did.

‘Touch it gently,’ said Father to Andy, who carried a little stick.

Very carefully Andy leaned over the pool, very gently he touched the anemone, and in an instant what had looked like a full-blown, brilliant flower now grew smaller and smaller, until it was not half its former size.

‘I don’t want to touch it,’ said Alice, her hands behind her back, ‘but I do want to fish. Miss Neppy said that if I brought a fish home she would cook it for my dinner.’

Now Alice and Sally and Andy had come down to the rocks this morning quite prepared to catch any number of fish.

Each one had a fishing rod made of a lilac[90] switch out by Father from the white-lilac bush that grew beside Sally’s kitchen door. And each one had fastened to the rod a long piece of string, on the end of which was tied a bent pin.

As they settled themselves in a row and prepared to fling their lines into the sea, you might have noticed that behind each fisherman stood a pail, a gay-colored tin pail used for digging in the sand, but equally useful for carrying home a large catch of fish.

‘Did you ever catch anything?’ asked Andy of Sally, who had lived all her life by the sea.

‘No, I haven’t yet,’ answered Sally truthfully, ‘but then I always think I may.’

‘There are whales in the sea,’ volunteered Alice. ‘The Bible says so. Oh, how I wish I could catch a whale and carry it home to surprise Miss Neppy and Mother!’

‘Whales are too big to carry home,’ instructed Sally. ‘I have seen pictures of them. Father, isn’t a whale too big for Alice to carry home?’

But Father was now sitting back in the shade,[91] reading his morning paper, and the sound of Sally’s shrill little voice was carried away by the breeze.

Near by the blue waves glittered and danced, while farther out at sea sail-boats scudded before the wind, little motor boats chugged busily past, and stately yachts moved slowly along, dazzling white in the morning sun.

The fishermen fished on with never a bite, not even a nibble. They drew in their lines, they bent their pins a-fresh, they tossed out their lines again with many a whirl and twirl.

‘Do you think we will catch anything to-day?’ asked Andy, whose leg had begun to have a ‘crick’ in it from sitting still so long.

But just then Alice uttered a cry and pointed out into the water.

‘Look! Look!’ cried Alice. ‘It is a fish, a fish out there in the water. It is a whale, I know it is, a big blue whale.’

Sally and Andy followed Alice’s pointing finger. There on the surface of the waves they[92] could plainly see a number of objects, red and blue, that seemed to be swimming toward them at a rapid rate.

‘They look like people’s heads,’ said Sally.

‘Perhaps they are mermaids,’ murmured Andy.

‘I think that first blue one is a whale,’ insisted Alice.

Now all the fishermen were so excited that they dropped their rods and rose to their feet.

Sally waved her arms and called, ‘Father! Father!’

Andy and Alice could think of nothing better to do, so they, too, waved their arms and shouted, ‘Father! Father!’ as loud as ever they could.

Father heard. He folded his paper, and came slowly over the rocks toward the excited little group.

Yes, Father, too, saw the red and blue objects bounding along, dancing lightly over the[93] waves, and, with the children, wondered what they were.

The tide had turned. Each wave came higher up on shore, and already an eager bather or two had waded out into the rising water.

Soon a boy bather, gay in his red bathing-suit, saw the objects at which three pairs of hands were pointing and waving wildly. He paddled toward them, as they bobbed about, red and blue, and then with a laugh that made the children laugh, too, he set them bounding faster than ever over the waves toward the spot where Alice and Sally and Andy stood.

‘What are they? Oh, what do you think they are?’ asked Alice over and over again. ‘Do you think they can be whales?’

‘No, I don’t,’ replied Sally, wisely shaking her head. ‘They don’t look like whales to me. Why, I know what they are. They are balls!’

‘Balls?’ echoed Andy in a shout. ‘Oh, I love balls!’

And balls they were, great red and blue[94] rubber balls, and what they were doing, sailing alone over the ocean, was a question hard for any one to answer.

The merry little boy bather waded back and caught the balls as they came bounding in to shore. He handed them up to the children, a red ball each to Andy and Sally, a big red ball, hard and full of bounce, you could see, while Alice wanted the blue ball so badly that she couldn’t help holding out her hands for it, so of course the boy gave the blue ball to her.

‘Where did they come from?’ asked Sally and Andy in a breath.

As for Alice, she didn’t ask any questions. She was rubbing her blue ball dry on her dress, with an extra loving little pat every now and then.

‘I am sure I can’t guess,’ was Father’s answer. ‘Perhaps I shall hear something about it later on. Play with them at any rate and have a good time.’

Now you cannot bounce a ball on sharp[95] pointed rocks, and Sally and Andy and Alice, each holding a ball in his arms, were making ready to scramble back to the mainland to try their new treasures, when there was a loud shout from the water that made every one turn round to see what it could mean.

A small motor boat was chuf-chuf-chuffing straight toward the point where they stood. And a man was standing in the bow of the boat waving his hat in the air and shouting at the top of his voice,

‘My balls! My balls! They are my balls! My balls!’

As Sally and Andy and Alice each held a ball, and even the merry boy bather had an extra ball in his hand that had just come bouncing gayly in on the waves, it was plain that the man was talking to them.

So Father called back—he could do nothing else—‘If they are your balls, come and get them.’

When Sally and Andy and Alice heard these[96] words, they clutched their balls very tightly as if they would never let them go.

But now Father was speaking again, for the man in the boat was quite near.

‘How did your balls get in the water?’ called Father.

And the man shouted back, ‘The box they were in fell overboard and the cover came off. I bought them for my shop over in Rockport, and I was carrying them home when they fell overboard. I nearly lost a box of tin horns, too.’

‘If you have a shop, perhaps you will sell these balls to me,’ suggested Father. ‘Would you like that ball you have?’ he asked the boy bather.

But the boy bather shook his head.

‘No, I play baseball,’ said he.

And he tossed the ball he held back into the man’s boat.

‘I guess I can sell the balls to you,’ agreed the man, looking more cheerful at once. ‘I am glad to make a sale anywhere.’

[97]When Sally and Alice and Andy heard this, they prepared at once to go home.

‘Let us put our balls into our pails,’ said Sally, ‘and bounce them when we get home.’

So each ball was popped into a pail. They fitted nicely except that they rose high over the top, round and plump and gay.

‘My pail is so full I am glad I left my shovel at home to-day,’ said Sally, admiring the effect of her new red ball in her bright green pail.

‘Perhaps people will think we are carrying home fish,’ suggested Andy, swinging his pail so hard it was well that his ball was a tight fit.

‘Perhaps they will think it is a whale,’ said Alice hopefully. ‘I would love to surprise Miss Neppy and my mother with a whale.’

‘Perhaps they will,’ said Sally kindly. ‘Anyway, it is the first time I ever caught anything when I went fishing, and I am glad it is a ball and not a fish, aren’t you?’

That night Sally couldn’t go to sleep.

She tossed and turned in her little white bed. She watched Snow White’s wings move lazily to and fro on the window-sill. She had two drinks of water. But still she couldn’t go to sleep.

‘Mother,’ called Sally, ‘Mother, I can’t go to sleep.’

So Mother came to smooth Sally’s pillow and to tuck in the bed covers that were sadly tumbled and twisted about.

‘Shut your eyes,’ said Mother softly, with a hand on Sally’s forehead, ‘and think of little white sheep jumping over a wall, one after another, one after another, until you fall asleep.’

Sally shut her eyes just as Mother said and tried to count the little white sheep. But instead[99] of jumping nicely over the wall, the little white sheep ran round and round the field as fast as ever they could, and this made Sally feel so wide awake that her blue eyes flew open with a jerk and she sat straight up in bed.

‘Mother,’ she called again, ‘Mother, I want a drink of water.’

It was Father, not Mother, who came into Sally’s room this time, and he must have known that Sally wanted company more than she wanted a drink of water. For he lay down beside Sally on the bed and took her hand in his.

‘Once upon a time,’ began Father, in the most comfortable kind of a way, ‘there lived a family of Periwinkles under a rock on the edge of the sand.’

Now a story was just what Sally had been wishing for, and at this pleasant beginning she snuggled down in bed without a word and closed her eyes, the better to enjoy the tale.

‘There was Mother Periwinkle,’ went on Father. ‘She stayed at home and kept the[100] house. There was Father Periwinkle, too. He scurried round to find food for the family.’

‘I never saw a periwinkle scurry,’ interrupted Sally. ‘I thought they could only creep.’

‘You never saw Father Periwinkle out hunting sand-bugs for dinner,’ was Father’s answer.

‘No, I never did,’ agreed Sally, with the tiniest kind of a yawn.

‘Then there were the children, Peri and Winkle,’ continued Father. ‘Peri was a sweet little girl and Winkle was a good little boy. That is, he was almost always good. But one morning he woke up naughty. I don’t know why, I am sure, but it was so.’

Sally nodded as if she understood. No doubt she did understand, for sometimes the same thing happened to her.

‘What did he do naughty?’ she asked with interest.

‘Everything,’ replied Father, ‘everything he could think of to do. His mother was hurrying round, cleaning up the house, because they were[101] all going to take dinner that day with Grandmother Periwinkle who lived up the beach. But Winkle wouldn’t help his mother at all. He might have dusted or straightened up the rooms. But he didn’t. Instead, he kept standing in his mother’s way until twice she nearly tripped over him and fell. Then when his little sister Peri was just getting over a crying spell—’

‘What did she cry for?’ interrupted Sally again.

‘She cried when she was having her face washed,’ said Father, ‘for she was like some little girls I know, only instead of saying that her mother put soap in her eyes, she said salt, for of course she was washed in salt water from the sea.’

‘Oh!’ said Sally, hiding her face on Father’s shoulder, ‘oh!’

‘Well, what do you think Winkle did to her then?’ asked Father.

‘I don’t know,’ said Sally eagerly, lifting her head. ‘What did he do?’

[102]‘Why, instead of smiling at Peri and trying to keep her cheerful and happy as any good little brother would,’ went on Father, ‘he put his head in the air and called “Whimper-cat! Whimper-cat!” and stuck his horns out at her, which for a periwinkle is just as bad as sticking his tongue out is for a child.’

‘Oh,’ said Sally, delighted with Winkle’s naughtiness, ‘oh, I wouldn’t do that, would I?’

‘No, indeed, you wouldn’t,’ replied Father. ‘Well, when Peri stopped crying, and they were both washed and dressed and their horns nicely curled, they started off. First Winkle crawled so fast that he bumped into Peri and knocked her down. Her shell was all covered with sand, and right there on the beach she had another crying spell. You might think, now, he had done enough mischief. But while his mother was brushing the sand off Peri with her horns, he gave his little sister another push that toppled her over into a pool of water.’

Sally drew a long breath. ‘Wasn’t he[103] naughty?’ said she, giving Father’s hand a little squeeze.

‘He was,’ said Father, ‘and this last push made Mother Periwinkle very angry.

‘“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Winkle,” said she, severely. “You know your sister sneezed three times last night. Do you want to give her a cold in her nose? Answer me that.”’

‘Her nose,’ said Sally laughing. ‘I would like to see a periwinkle’s nose.’

‘Well, that is what Mother Periwinkle said,’ went on Father. ‘Winkle didn’t answer his mother at all. Instead, just to be disagreeable, he began to creep as slowly as he could. He scarcely seemed to move. He crept so slowly that Mother Periwinkle was afraid they would all be late to dinner.

‘“I don’t know what your grandmother will say if we are late,” said she, looking anxious. “Do hurry, Winkle. You are as slow as a snail.”’

[104]‘Why, periwinkles are snails,’ spoke up Sally, opening her eyes in surprise.

‘Of course they are,’ answered Father, ‘but Mother Periwinkle didn’t think of that. Anyway, Winkle wouldn’t hurry. So, first, Mother Periwinkle coaxed him.

‘“You are the quickest little Periwinkle I know. Let me see how fast you can crawl, Winkle,” said she.

‘But that didn’t make Winkle hurry.

‘Then she scolded him.

‘“Shame on you, Winkle Periwinkle. How can you be so naughty?”

‘But that didn’t make Winkle hurry.

‘Then Mother Periwinkle thought she would give him a shaking. But Winkle, in a flash, drew himself inside his shell where no one could reach him, not even his mother. So after tapping on his shell with her horns to let him know how naughty he was, Mother Periwinkle and Peri moved along and left Master Winkle sitting alone on the sand.

[105]‘For a long, long time he sat there, just thinking of all he had done. He was pleased that he had found so many naughty things to do. But presently he began to feel hungry.

‘“I wonder what Grandmother will have for dinner,” thought he. “Perhaps I had better go now. Peri will eat everything I like.”

‘Before he had time to start Winkle heard a Voice behind him, a big, deep Voice that said,

‘“Move on, move on there. Move along at once.”

‘This made Winkle angry. He was a tempery little snail, you see. Who could it be, talking to him in this rude fashion?

‘He moved round, shell and all, of course, to see who it was, but the big Voice moved round, too, and kept behind Winkle no matter how fast he turned.

‘Round and round went Winkle and round and round went the Voice, still calling out,

‘“Move on, move on there, move on.”

‘Winkle was so angry that he made up his[106] mind he would be saucy and stick out his horns, when suddenly the Voice said something that made him change his mind.

‘“Periwinkle Pie!” said the Voice. “Periwinkle Pie! Made of naughty little Periwinkle boys. How I like Periwinkle Pie!”

‘For a moment Winkle Sat quite still.

‘“Periwinkle Pie?” said he to himself. “We never have Periwinkle Pie at home. I have heard of Clam Pie and Lobster Pie and Fish Pie, but never Periwinkle Pie.”

‘And then came the deep Voice again, “Periwinkle Pie! Made of naughty little Periwinkle boys! Periwinkle Pie for dinner!”

‘Winkle didn’t wait to hear any more. He started off down the beach toward Grandmother Periwinkle’s as fast as ever he could creep.

‘He made up his mind that if Grandmother asked him why he was so late he would tell the truth and say he was sorry, for he didn’t mean to be a naughty little Periwinkle boy any more.

[107]‘Periwinkle Pie! Made of naughty little Periwinkle boys!

‘Ugh! The very idea made him shake inside his shell.

‘But good Grandmother Periwinkle didn’t ask any questions.

‘They were eating dessert, seaweed blanc mange and jelly-roll, when Winkle came in, and he slipped into his seat and began to eat jelly-roll, too, without saying a word.

‘“Won’t you have a little Clam Pie, Winkle?” asked Grandmother politely.

‘Winkle grew quite pale and shook his head. The very thought of pie made him feel ill.

‘Father Periwinkle was late to dinner, too. He came in soon after Winkle, and he ate Clam Pie with relish, two shellfulls, for the Periwinkles use shells, of course, instead of plates.

‘All the rest of the day Winkle was the very best little Periwinkle boy along the shore.

‘That night before he went to sleep he told his mother what had happened to him, and[108] whenever after that he began to be naughty, all Mother or Father Periwinkle had to say to him was “Periwinkle Pie!” to turn him into a good little Periwinkle boy again.’

‘What was the big Voice?’ asked Sally sleepily.

Her eyes were closing and opening and closing again.

‘It was his own father,’ was Father’s reply. ‘Mother Periwinkle met him on the way to Grandmother’s and told him how badly Winkle was behaving. So Father Periwinkle crept up behind him and talked in a deep bass voice that Winkle didn’t know at all.’

‘His own father,’ murmured Sally, too sleepy to be surprised. ‘Now tell me—tell me—’

‘I will tell you good-night,’ said Father softly, as he slipped out of the room.

And Sally didn’t answer, for she was sound asleep.

Alice had a toothache. At least she had had a toothache, but now the pain was gone, leaving her with a swollen cheek twice as plump as it ought to be.

Alice quite enjoyed her too plump face. When she looked in the mirror she couldn’t help smiling, her face was so droll. And her smile was so funny, so twisted, so ‘fat,’ that Alice just couldn’t help smiling again.

As for Sally, she laughed outright at Alice’s face when she came over to play that afternoon.

‘This is the way you look,’ said she, plumping out both cheeks like two red balloons.

In spite of all the laughing and the fun, Alice didn’t feel yet like playing lively games.

Her mother had gone to the city, shopping, and Alice, after a little nap, had been sitting[110] quietly downstairs with Miss Neppy until Sally came over to play.

But when Sally did come, Alice didn’t feel like romping in the garden, nor going down to the beach, nor even swinging in Sally’s big red swing. So she and Sally settled down, with a picture book between them, in the kitchen where Miss Neppy was ironing aprons.

Sally was always interested in Miss Neppy’s aprons, and it was because she wore so many of them. Yes, all at one time, Miss Neppy would wear as many as four or five aprons, and Sally knew quite well, by now, what each apron meant.

First of all, just over her dress, Miss Neppy wore a small, fine, white apron, trimmed with lace she had made herself, and often with pockets ornamented by tiny bows of pale lavender ribbon. This was her very best apron, quite nice enough to wear when the minister came to call.

Over the small white apron Miss Neppy would[111] tie a large, full, white one, with three fine tucks above the hem. This was the apron in which Miss Neppy would knit or sew or even sit and talk with her friends.

Above this white apron came a stout one, perhaps of white with little blue dots or rings, or perhaps with gay bunches of pink or blue posies. In this apron Miss Neppy did her dusting, her bed-making, her shelling of peas and stringing of beans.

While, last of all, came a dark blue-and-white gingham apron that covered little Miss Neppy all round about and was meant for cooking and washing, for digging in the garden and for scrubbing the floors.

As I say, Sally had grown to know the proper use of each apron, and she knew, too, that Miss Neppy would not feel completely dressed unless she had the right apron on at the right time. Sally had often watched her slip out of her gingham and her dotted aprons when a neighbor knocked at her door, and once she had seen[112] Miss Neppy untie three aprons in the twinkling of an eye and, neat and trim, shake hands with the minister who had come to call.

This afternoon Miss Neppy was ironing aprons, and for this work she wore a white apron covered closely with fine dark blue dots.

Thump, thump went the iron, with an occasional hiss! when Miss Neppy tested it with a Wet forefinger to see whether it were hot enough or no. The pile of ironed aprons grew higher and higher, and Sally and Alice looked up every now and then from the picture book to watch it grow.

‘You must have more than a hundred aprons, Miss Neppy,’ said Sally, watching Miss Neppy unroll and shake out a dampened apron covered over with bright pink flowers.

‘That is the prettiest apron of all,’ thought Sally to herself.

‘Oh, no, Sally,’ replied Miss Neppy, looking at the little girl over her spectacles, ‘I have nothing like a hundred aprons. Why, I should[113] think it was wicked to have as many as that.’

Presently Miss Neppy finished her ironing.

‘I’m going into the garden to pick beans for dinner, children,’ said she.

So she tied about her waist a dark blue-and-white checked apron that covered her all round, and with her basket on her arm went into the garden that sloped down the steep hill toward the sea.

‘I think I will go upstairs and bring down Jack Tar,’ said Alice. ‘I haven’t seen him since last night when I went to bed with toothache.’

So Sally was left alone.

She walked round the kitchen that she knew almost as well as her own, and looked out of the window at Miss Neppy’s head and back bending over the green rows of beans. Then she eyed the high pile of aprons left on the table to air. On top of the pile lay the pink-and-white apron, ‘the prettiest one of all.’

The next thing Sally knew she had taken the[114] pink-and-white apron from the pile, had unfolded it, and was shaking it out.

Of course she knew she shouldn’t touch Miss Neppy’s apron. She knew it as well as you or I. But in spite of this, she first held the apron up before her, and then, finding that it dragged upon the floor, she flung it round her shoulders like a cape, and swept about the room with the cape flying out behind.

What fun it was! How fine she felt! When Alice came downstairs she, too, must borrow an apron and they would play ‘lady come to see.’

Round the room whirled Sally again, laughing as she went. But, alas! for Sally and her fun!

Somehow the pink-and-white apron caught on the iron latch of the stairway door, there was a sharp sound of tearing, and frightened Sally looked round to see a long strip of the apron hanging limp and loose from the rest of the hem.

She had torn Miss Neppy’s apron! What should she do?

[115]Sally didn’t stop to think. If she had, she would have known that the only thing for her to do would be to go straight to Miss Neppy in the garden and tell her just what had happened.

But Sally didn’t do this.

She took off the apron in a flash, she rolled it into a ball, and then she tucked it away in the lowest drawer of Miss Neppy’s dresser, hidden under a pile of napkins and the big kitchen roller towel.

She was just in time, for downstairs came Alice, smiling and laughing and ready now for fun.

‘I have been making new faces upstairs, in front of Mother’s mirror,’ said she. ‘Look, can you do this?’

But Sally wouldn’t try the new faces, nor even laugh nor smile.

‘I feel sick,’ said Sally. ‘My throat hurts. I want to go home.’

So Sally went home. She couldn’t run fast enough, she wanted so badly to whisper in[116] Mother’s ear the dreadful thing she had done.

But Mother had company, two strange ladies, who stayed until Sally thought they never meant to go.

And, somehow, when at last she and Mother were alone, Sally didn’t feel like telling. When Father came home, Sally didn’t feel like telling him, either.

She couldn’t eat her dinner. Her throat hurt, she said. She couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t speak.

She sat alone on the doorstep with Paulina in her arms, and was really glad when Mother called her to come in to bed.

Once in bed, Sally lay and tossed.

Why hadn’t she told Miss Neppy? Miss Neppy wouldn’t scold. Sally was not afraid of that. Did Miss Neppy know yet about the apron? Had she found it, tucked away in the lowest dresser drawer?

Perhaps Miss Neppy would come straight over the moment the apron was found. She[117] might be coming over that very night. Perhaps she would say that Mother must buy her a new pink-and-white apron. Did such aprons cost very much? Sally didn’t know.

Perhaps, too, when Mrs. Burr heard of it, she would not allow Alice to play with Sally any more. And would Miss Neppy ever love Sally after this? If she thought it was wicked to have one hundred aprons, what would she think of a little girl who tore one and didn’t tell!

Oh, if Sally had only told Mother and Father! If only they knew!

Oh, oh, oh!

Sally was crying and choking, when suddenly she slipped out of bed.

Downstairs she started, tumbling over her long nightgown, slipping and catching the banisters at every step.

In astonishment Father looked up from his paper and Mother from her sewing to see Sally in the doorway, the tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘I tore Miss Neppy’s apron,’ sobbed Sally.[118] ‘I tore it and I hid it in the dresser drawer. I played with her apron, and I tore it and I didn’t tell.’

And Sally fairly danced up and down, she felt so miserable and unhappy about it all.

But after a moment or two, with Sally safe on Father’s lap, and Mother kneeling on the floor, holding both hands in hers, Sally was able to stop crying and to tell all that had happened that afternoon.

When she had quite finished, Father said, ‘Suppose we go straight over to Miss Neppy’s and tell her now.’

Sally nodded. It was just what she wanted to do.

So Mother ran for Sally’s slippers and long blue coat, and Father carried her over the way to where Miss Neppy sat alone by her front window, rocking and knitting and humming a little song.

Miss Neppy, when she heard Sally’s story, was very much surprised.

[119]‘Land sakes!’ exclaimed Miss Neppy, ‘I never missed that apron when I put the others away. And I left it on the top of the pile, too, because, when I ironed it, I saw that the hem was ripped. Go get the apron, Sally, and let us look at it, do.’

Out of the lowest dresser drawer Sally pulled the apron, all crumpled into a ball. And, would you believe it, when Sally and Miss Neppy and Father looked at it, the apron was not torn at all, the hem was only ripped. It seemed too good to be true.

‘Mother will mend it,’ said Sally joyfully. ‘She told me to bring it home with me. Mother will mend it, Miss Neppy.’

And Sally put both arms about Miss Neppy’s neck and gave her a tight, tight hug.

In the morning, bright and early, Sally ran over to Miss Neppy’s again, with the apron nicely mended and freshly ironed in her arms.

‘Next time I will tell the very first thing,[120] Miss Neppy,’ said Sally, smiling up into her friend’s face.

Miss Neppy smiled back.

‘I would,’ said she. ‘Never keep a secret like that again. And, Sally, there is a peach for you on the window-sill. Don’t spill it on your dress.’

The postman was coming up the street and Sally stood on the doorstep waiting for him.

His whistle sounded loud and shrill, slowly, house by house, he drew near, and at last with a smile and a tap on Sally’s head, he put a letter into her hands and bade her give it to her mother before she lost it.

This was an old joke between the postman and Sally that never failed to make them both laugh.

‘Just as if I would lose a letter,’ thought Sally to herself as she went into the house, ‘when I am almost six years old.’

‘Mother,’ she called, climbing the stairs, ‘Mother, here is a letter for you.’

And as Mother dropped her sewing into her lap, Sally placed the letter squarely in her mother’s hands.

[122]‘There now,’ said she with a triumphant nod, ‘I didn’t lose that letter, did I?’

Mother absently shook her head. She was reading her letter and smiling as she read.

‘Who wrote it?’ asked Sally, pressing against Mother’s knee.

‘Aunt Sarah Waters,’ was Mother’s reply.

‘My Aunt Sarah?’ demanded Sally. ‘What does she say about me, Mother? What does she say about me?’

‘She is writing about your birthday,’ answered Mother. ‘She has made a funny mistake. She thinks that to-morrow is your birthday, Sally, instead of a whole month away. And she wants you to buy your own birthday present this year, because she is in the country, far away from any shop, and cannot buy it for you herself.’

Sally’s face grew very bright. A present from Aunt Sarah, and a present that she might choose her very own self! She leaned forward suddenly and placed a kiss on Mother’s chin. She was so[123] happy she felt that she must do something to show it.

‘What shall I buy, Mother?’ asked Sally, her cheeks red with excitement. ‘What shall I choose? I want a tea-set and a doll’s piano more than anything else, but I would like a farmyard, too, with little cows and pigs and ducks like the new one Alice has, or perhaps a big bag full of marbles like Andy’s. I could shoot marbles just as well as Andy. I know I could.’

‘We will think about it,’ answered Mother. ‘There is plenty of time. It is a whole month, four long weeks, before your birthday, remember.’

‘But, Mother,’ began Sally, in great surprise, ‘but, Mother, I shan’t wait a whole month for my present, shall I? Won’t we go and buy it to-morrow? I don’t want to wait, Mother. I don’t, I don’t.’

Sally’s face was no longer bright. It had clouded over, and her under lip was thrust out as if she might be going to cry.

[124]‘Why, Sally,’ answered Mother gently, ‘I hardly know what to say. To-morrow isn’t your birthday, you know. If you bought a present now from Aunt Sarah you wouldn’t have one when the real birthday came.’

‘Yes, I would, Mother,’ urged Sally, winking hard. ‘I would have the one I would buy to-morrow. I won’t lose it or break it or let Tippy play with it. I will be so careful. Aunt Sarah wants me to buy it to-morrow. She says so in her letter. You know she does.’

Sally gazed so anxiously up into her mother’s face that Mother thought for a moment and then said cheerfully,

‘This is what we will do, Sally. To-night we will tell Father all about it and whatever he says we will do. Now run over to Aunt Bee’s with this card of buttons. She left them here yesterday. And don’t stay too long, Sally. Come home soon.’

What would Father say to-night? Was she to buy her present now or to wait four long, long[125] weeks? Sally could think and talk of nothing else.

‘If I am very good all day long, don’t you think Father will say, “Buy your present now?”’ Sally asked Aunt Bee, and Aunt Bee thought it likely that he would.

Then Sally went over to visit Alice, and she and Alice talked and talked about the present that might be bought the very next day.

‘A tea-set,’ said Alice at once. ‘I don’t think there is anything nicer than a tea-set. And do try to choose one with pink flowers. Pink flowers are the prettiest of all.’

Sally did want a tea-set, but, oh! think of a doll’s piano!

‘A trunk would be nice for the dolls,’ suggested Sally, ‘only I haven’t many clothes to put in it, and I would like a rolling-pin and a wash-tub and some teeny, tiny clothes-pins, too. I wish it was night, don’t you, Alice? Don’t you wish Father was home now?’

But, to-night, of all nights in the year, Father[126] didn’t come home to dinner at all. He telephoned Mother that he would not be home until long past Sally’s bedtime. So Sally was forced to go to bed without knowing what Father’s answer would be.

But the next morning she woke to find Mother standing at her bedside, and before Sally could ask a single question she knew by Mother’s smiling face that she was to buy her present now.

‘Yes, we are to go into the city to-day,’ said Mother, ‘to buy your birthday present.’

At this news Sally was so happy that she could scarcely speak a word.

She left her chair at breakfast three times to hug Father close, and, if she could, she would have hurried Mother off to the train an hour before it started.

Once on the train there was so much to be seen from the window that Sally had little time to talk.

Green meadows, fields of corn, a brook with cows knee-deep in the shade. Over a bridge,[127] through a dark tunnel, with every now and then a glimpse of the sparkling sea.

On and on thundered the train. Sometimes it would stop at a small village station to let an old woman with a basket climb on or off. Sometimes it roared its way into a smoky town, the streets lined with brick buildings and filled with people moving to and fro.

Then came the marshes, covered with pale green grasses and rushes, with pools of water that gleamed white in the sun.

Last of all, the city, the great bustling city, with its dashing automobiles and heavy trucks, its crowds of people, its haste and confusion and noise.

Sally held fast to Mother’s hand. If she let go, even for a moment, Mother might be swallowed up in the crowd, and then how would Sally ever find her way home again?

‘Do you think all these people have little boys and girls like me at home?’ asked Sally, as she and Mother made their way through the[128] crowd toward the big shops where you might buy almost anything in the world.

‘A great many of them have,’ answered Mother, ‘and some of them have brought their little boys and girls with them to town.’

Sure enough, directly in front of Sally walked a little boy wearing a blue sailor suit, and not far away she spied a little girl with long yellow curls.

‘I see them,’ said Sally. ‘I wonder whether they would buy a tea-set or a piano or a farmyard for a birthday present, if they had an Aunt Sarah to give them one. Would you stop and ask them, Mother, if you were me?’

‘No, indeed,’ said Mother. ‘I would rather go into this shop and look at the toys for sale.’

In the store entrance Mother paused to let Sally look in the shop window. It was filled with stiff figures of women, wearing silk dresses and fancy hats, and with gay scarfs thrown about their necks. They all had pretty, smiling faces[129] and very pink cheeks and lips. Sally thought they were beautiful.

‘Are they dressed for a party?’ she asked.

‘They look as if they were,’ answered Mother.

‘Perhaps a birthday party,’ suggested Sally. ‘Oh, Mother, look, look!’

Sally gave Mother’s hand a violent shake, for from within the store a man was lifting into the show window the figure of a little girl. She was dressed in a neat dark blue frock. Upon her feet were shining brown shoes. Her hands were outstretched in a most friendly fashion.

But what made Sally’s cheeks grow pink and her eyes very bright were the cape and hood worn by the figure of the little girl. It was a scarlet cape, a gay scarlet cape, and fastened to it was a round hood that pulled snugly up over the little girl’s head.

As Sally looked at the cape she thought she had never seen anything so beautiful in all her life.

She looked and she looked and she did not say[130] a word. She saw how the stiff brown curls of the little figure were pulled out so prettily from under the close hood. Just so her own yellow hair would peep out, if only the cape belonged to her. She liked the way the cape folded back and showed the front of the dark blue frock. It is true that Sally had no dark blue dress at home, but surely a white one would look just as well.

Then Mother turned to go and Sally spoke.

‘Mother,’ said Sally, ‘I don’t want a tea-set and I don’t want a piano. I want a cape for my birthday present.’

‘A cape?’ said Mother in surprise. ‘Do you mean a red cape like the one in the window? Why, you don’t need a cape, Sally. Come upstairs now, and look at the toys.’

‘I want a cape,’ persisted Sally. ‘Aunt Sarah said I might choose my present myself.’

‘So you shall,’ answered Mother. ‘But come and look at the toys first.’

So upstairs went Sally, and round and round[131] the toy department she and Mother walked. Sally had never seen so many toys before in all her life.

She saw tea-sets and tea-tables, stoves and pianos. She saw dolls and their carriages, their cribs, their bureaus, and even their bathtubs. She saw toy animals and games, doll-houses, trains, and boats. There were picture books and painting sets, there were balls and blocks. There were really no toys made for a little girl’s pleasure that Sally did not see.

When they had walked all round the room Mother said, ‘Well, Sally, what will you choose?’

And Sally’s answer was, ‘Please, I want a cape.’

So Mother and Sally went downstairs in the store to buy a cape.

‘Suppose they haven’t one left,’ thought Sally.

But the saleswoman pulled out a rack hung with scarlet capes, and in a trice she had[132] fastened one round Sally’s neck that proved a perfect fit. The hood was pulled up round her head and that, too, fitted nicely. Sally noticed, as she stood before the long mirror, that her hair peeped out from under the hood just as did the curls on the little figure in the window downstairs.

‘Will you wear it home or shall we have it put in a box?’ asked Mother, smiling to see Sally’s delight.

‘I will wear it, please,’ answered Sally in a whisper.

She was too happy to speak out loud.

All the long day spent in the city Sally wore her scarlet cape. She trudged happily along at Mother’s side, in and out of the shops, up and down in the great store elevators. She walked until her shoes felt as heavy as if made of wood. She was so tired that she slept all the way home on the train.

But when Father met them at the Seabury Station she was wide awake, and turned proudly [133]round and round so that Father might see her birthday present from every side.

‘Well, I declare,’ said Father at last, ‘you look just like little Red Ridinghood’s sister.’

‘Do I?’ said Sally, smiling up at Father as pleased as could be. ‘Do I? But then, who is the wolf?’

‘Why, Tippy, of course,’ answered Father, smiling back.

‘Oh, oh!’ said Sally, squeezing Father’s hand. ‘Will you write and tell Aunt Sarah about it, about the cape and little Red Ridinghood’s sister, and the wolf?’

‘Yes, I will,’ promised Father. ‘I will write to her to-night.’

‘But, Father,’ said Sally, after a moment, ‘will you tell her that Tippy is a good wolf, that he is not bad? Tell her that he is a good wolf most times.’

‘Yes, I will write that, too,’ agreed Father. ‘But what shall I tell her about Red Ridinghood’s sister? Is she good or bad?’

[134]‘I don’t know,’ said Sally, turning bashful. ‘Mother, what shall Father say about me?’

‘Well,’ answered Mother thoughtfully, ‘I think little Red Ridinghood’s sister is like her wolf, Tippy, good most times, too.’

It was Sally’s birthday and she was six years old.

Four long weeks ago she and Mother had gone into the city and had bought Sally’s little Red Ridinghood cape, a present from Aunt Sarah Waters.

‘My early birthday present,’ Sally called it, and wore it every time a cape was needed and often, too, when it was not.

This birthday morning Sally was out of bed early. She had been awake a long, long time, as much as five minutes, perhaps, watching the sun make a rosy pattern on her wall. But now she couldn’t wait any longer for the presents that she felt sure were hidden in Mother’s closet or dresser drawer.

She stopped long enough to put on her red cape over her nightgown and then crept into Mother’s room across the hall.

[136]Sally had meant to waken Mother and Father with a hug, a birthday hug. But there on Mother’s table were the presents, all spread out in a row, and Sally simply couldn’t stop to hug until she had untied the boxes and bundles that she knew were meant for her.

Father and Mother, too, it seemed, were awake early like Sally, and were quite as interested as she in finding out what her presents might be.

There was a tea-set with pink flowers, the pinkest kind of pink flowers, too.

‘Alice will like that,’ said Sally in great satisfaction.

There was a wash-tub and scrubbing-board and teeny, weeny, wooden clothes-pins, and actually a little clothes-line, so that you wouldn’t have to use a bit of string.

There was a bag of marbles, every color, red and blue and green and purple, all striped and spotted, as gay as you please.

‘I won’t have to play with Andy’s marbles[137] any more,’ said Sally, shaking the bag and enjoying the cheerful rattle, ‘I have my own marbles now.’

There were two bright picture books, filled with pictures.

And, oh! best of all, a bathtub just big enough to hold Nancy Lee, a bathtub that you could really fill with water and in which you could really bathe the stout and wooden Nancy Lee.

‘This is the best birthday I have ever had,’ said Sally, hopping from one end to the other of Mother’s room.

Even after breakfast Sally couldn’t sit still a moment. She seemed to be all over the house at once, and no matter where Mother went, there was Sally, too, laughing and talking and standing in the way.

There was to be a birthday party that afternoon and Mother was as busy as could be.

‘Now, Sally,’ said she at last, ‘you must go up to the attic and dress your dolls for the party.[138] Straighten the attic, too. It ought to be as neat as a pin.’

Half-way up the attic stairs Sally turned and came down again. Mother was in the kitchen and Sally followed her there.

‘My cake!’ said Sally. ‘I forgot it. Who is going to make my birthday cake, Mother? Are you?’

‘No,’ answered Mother, who was slicing bread very thin, ‘Aunt Bee is going to make your cake.’

‘Then I must go over and help her,’ said Sally. ‘I helped her before, and the cake was good.’

‘No, indeed,’ replied Mother hastily. ‘Aunt Bee won’t need your help this morning. And you really must straighten the attic, Sally. I am ashamed of the way it looks.’

‘I will, then,’ said Sally, starting upstairs. ‘But what are you making, Mother?’

‘Sandwiches,’ replied Mother. ‘Yes, for the party. Run, Sally, I think I hear Paulina calling you.’

[139]Sally laughed. She knew that was Mother’s way of telling her to go.

So, carrying the bathtub, she went up to the attic and told her children all about her presents and promised a sight of them before long.

She put Nancy Lee in the bathtub and bathed her all over, a dry bath this morning because Sally was in a hurry. She took Dora and Nora and Flora out of their shoe-box and sat them on the sofa in a row, just to give them a change of scene, as it were.

She straightened the doll-house and tidied all her toys.

Then with two sashes, kindly lent by Paulina, she went in search of Tippy and Buff.

Buff, as usual, sat on the window-sill in the sun. He allowed Sally to tie the blue sash round his neck in a birthday bow. But the moment she had finished he clawed it off, and when she tried again, he ran up the black-cherry tree where Sally couldn’t reach him, and only blinked his eyes at her when she called him to come down.

[140]Tippy was more agreeable. He permitted Sally to fasten a gay red bow on his collar, and barked and jumped about as if he really liked it.

‘Now, Buff, look at Tip,’ said Sally reproachfully. ‘But you shan’t have the blue ribbon now, not if you cry for it.’

And Sally went upstairs to tie round Snow White’s plump neck the blue sash, that streamed out finely in the wind and gave a holiday look to the whole house.

Soon it was time for the party, and in came Andy and Alice, gay and smiling Andy with his ball and Alice with jolly Jack Tar.

They bounced their balls, they ran races in the garden. They looked at the new picture books and played with the marbles and the tea-set.

Then Mother called them, and there stood a little table, all set for three, with Aunt Bee’s tea-set that she had when she was a little girl, and a cake, a birthday cake, right in the middle of the table.

[141]It was a white cake, white as snow, and on it were not candles—Sally had had candles last year—but mice, six chocolate mice, with tiny pointed chocolate ears, white sugar eyes, and, actually, long pointed chocolate tails. Never was there such a birthday surprise! Who but Mother and Aunt Bee would have thought of such a thing and would have searched the big city over until the mice were found!

There were sandwiches and milk, all you could eat and drink, but of course the cake was the real party. Mother cut it, and on top of Sally’s piece there sat a mouse, and one on Alice’s and on Andy’s piece, too.

‘There are three mice left,’ said Sally. ‘One for Mother, one for Aunt Bee, and one for Father. But what will Uncle Paul do?’

‘He won’t mind,’ answered Aunt Bee. ‘He may have half of mine.’

The cake was soon gone, every crumb, but it seemed a pity to eat the mice.

‘They are so pretty,’ said Alice.

[142]‘I want to show mine to Mother,’ said Andy.

‘Let us eat the tails and save the mice,’ suggested Sally.

But the tails were so good that the mice soon followed them. And then the party went out to swing until it was time to go home.

It was the end of summer, and the next day both Alice and Andy were going home. It was their last play together.

When Mrs. Thomas called for Andy, Mrs. Burr came from over the way for Alice, and every one said good-bye over and over again.

Alice and Andy were both coming back next summer, but Sally’s face was sober as, standing between Mother and Aunt Bee, she waved good-bye until Andy was round the corner and Alice indoors over the way.

‘They are both coming back next year, Sally,’ said Mother, cheerfully. ‘Remember that.’

‘But it is a long time to wait,’ answered Sally,[143] shaking her head, ‘and I don’t know what I shall do without them.’

‘You have Mother and Father,’ suggested Aunt Bee.

‘And you and Uncle Paul,’ answered Sally quickly, slipping one hand into Aunt Bee’s and with the other seizing Mother’s hand. ‘I love Andy and Alice, but I love Mother and Father and you and Uncle Paul more. Yes, those are the very ones that I love best,’ said little Sally Waters.

THE END