e of the
deepest rose, from which sweet odors were shaken out as Sara lifted it
to the light. Weeks afterward, when Sara astonished her mother by
begging for the pink plume on her prettiest hat, what she was really
pining for was a lock of the Plynck's hair.

Avrillia came next with her present. It was a little urn of jade and
ivory, and it was full to the top of dried poems written on
rose-leaves. Have you ever seen the quaint rose-jars some
old-fashioned ladies have in their parlors? Well, some one of them,
when she was little, saw one of Avrillia's poem-jars; and she made
these others in a homesick effort to imitate it. And the
fragrance--like nothing else you ever smelled--is the perfume of
Avrillia's poems, as nearly as that little old-fashioned lady, after
she grew up, could remember it.

You would not expect me to remember all of the presents Sara got that
day. But a good many I can remember. Pirlaps brought her a picture he
had painted; a very beautiful view of Nothing from Avrillia's balcony.
Yassuh brought her a delicious Crumb; it was wrapped in a sticky paper
covered with his finger-prints, but inside the paper was one of
Avrillia's exquisite napkins of embroidered mist. The First Gunkus,
remembering how she had loved the mountain, brought her a little live
Laugh. He had climbed the mountain and trapped it for her, and made
her a little cage to take it home with. It was very funny to hear it
tittering about inside. The rest of the Gunki had clubbed together and
bought her a gold-headed tuning-fork, so that she might be sure their
answers were in tune. The Snimmy's wife brought her three large onions,
neatly hemmed and tied in a bouquet with purple ribbon; the Snimmy
himself a striped paper bag full of gum-drops. And the Snoodle's
present was too cunning for anything! It was a little silver
plum-extractor. With it a child could extract all the fattest raisins
from her piece of mince-pie or portion of rice pudding without having
to bother with the uninteresting remainder and being reprimanded; for
the ingenious little instrument was invisible to adults. All the other
presents were marked "For Sara, with our congratulations, because she
is older than the Snoodle." But this one was marked, in a round,
childish hand, "For my dear Sara--because she is older than me."

But the grand surprise came when, near the last, four Gunki hurried in
bearing a large chest, which they placed at Sara's feet. "It came by
the