s, he kept his run of birthdays
like festivals which brought no warning with them.

They were celebrated with becoming pomp, with much-wrapped gifts that
he rejoiced to open himself and often with a yellow tea. As his taste
inclined to broad and simple effects, there would be a giant sunflower
in the center of the table, with strips of goldenrod emanating from it
like rays. The guests, his best-beloved of all ages and conditions,
would drink Sigurd's health in orangeade and feast in his honor on
sponge cake. From the day of Poor Ellen to that of Housewife
Honeyvoice, Amelia, a young and comely Irish Protestant, reigned in the
kitchen and made it her pride to celebrate Sigurd's anniversaries with
all due splendor, though even then she would not intermit the daily
scoldings to which she attributed his very gradual growth in grace. For
still he would run away at intervals and wallow in all iniquity. If the
prodigal returned by daylight and found us together, he would disport
himself at our feet in a brief agony of penitence. As he lay on his
back, writhing with remorse and apparently trying to clasp his paws in
supplication, we would reproach him, to the accompaniment of his hollow
groans, until our gravity would break down. Then he would cheerfully
scramble up and fetch us his latest rubber toy, with a coaxing
invitation to let bygones be bygones and have a frisk with Sigurd. If
he came home under cover of darkness, he would shamelessly go straight
to his own piazza corner, venting an indignant grunt, like an outraged
man of the house, if he found his supper soggy and his bed not made.

The birthday teas, though they brought so many of his friends across
the threshold, were not an unmixed joy to Sigurd. The flaunting bow of
new, stiff, yellow ribbon tickled his ears, until he had succeeded in
working it around, a rumpled knot, under his chin, and worse yet were
the wreaths of yellow wild flowers that the small fingers of some of
his child neighbors had woven for his neck. His share of his own
birthday cake, too, was more hygienically apportioned than he approved.
What is a speck of yellow frosting on a collie's long red tongue? But
Amelia saw to it that his birthday dinner was after his own
heart,--fresh corncake, rice and liver, while now and then some devoted
sophomore, even though the long vacation had put a thousand miles
between them, would send him a home-made chocolate cream as large as a
saucer, at which he was a