t were
winter, they always coaxed her into the sitting-room, where a pile of
magazines and books, bought to divert her, lay beside the lounge; or, if
it were summer, out into the front garden, where a low bench stood
against the house, under the lilac-bush, facing the round and
diamond-shaped beds of scarlet verbenas, yellow marguerites,
bachelor's-buttons and pansies.

But, though the little girl was ignorant of what the stone pile hid, she
was, nevertheless, thinking of mournful things as she sat there. The
Christmas before, Santa Claus had stingily dropped but one present down
the long stovepipe that carried up the smoke from the sitting-room
stove--one present to serve as both a holiday and a birthday
remembrance; and that had been a big, ugly crockery doll's head with
bumpy brown hair, staring blue eyes, fat, pink cheeks, and flinty
shoulders. The gift, aided by the confidences of the Swede boy, had
almost shaken her belief in Santa Claus, whom she had asked in a letter
to give her a bought riding-whip and a book that told more about
Robinson Crusoe. Instead, the homely head had been left, and she felt
sure (and the Swede boy assured her) that it could only have been
picked out for her by the eldest brother. And when, after gazing down
upon her stupidly for two or three months from the clock-shelf, it was
finally fastened, by thread run through the holes in its shoulders, to a
clumsy, jointless, sawdust body, it had only served to remind her more
bitterly than ever of the ill fortune that could make two great events
in one small life fall upon the selfsame day.

The little girl had often complained of the stork's bringing her at
Christmas-time, and had been promised by the biggest brother that, when
they should all agree that she was very good and deserving--because she
had cheerfully done everything she had been told--_she should have her
birthday changed to June_! But so far the promise had never been
fulfilled, for the little girl did not hold, as they did, that the
compact included the washing of potatoes or the scraping of the
mush-kettle. Now, June was almost at hand again, and, as she waited on
the bluff for the cow-horn to sound the call for dinner, she wondered if
the treasured change in dates would ever be made.

While she was still perched upon the topmost rock, she heard a faint
shout from the farm-yard, and looking that way, saw the eldest brother
standing on the seat of the Studebaker, frantically