e no prospect of anything
else in the wind, he began to believe his parents regarded it as one.
Grown-ups looked at things from such a different angle! No doubt they
felt they had spent upon him all they felt justified in spending.

This realization at first brought to the lad a sense of disappointment.
There were so many things he wanted! Why, although he would have blushed
to admit it, there was lying in his pocket this very minute a list of
gifts carefully written out in case his father or mother asked for
suggestions as they often had done in the past. But they did not inquire
for it. May eighteenth and May nineteenth slipped by without an allusion
to the fact that on May twentieth he had been born, and so oblivious was
everybody to his existence that had he not looked in the glass and
verified it, he would almost have begun to doubt he was alive himself.

When at length the great day dawned, he descended to breakfast with that
mingled anticipation and self-consciousness that always overwhelmed him
on such occasions. He was wont to feel very foolish and vividly aware of
his hands and feet when he made his annual advent into the dining room.

As it happened, however, he need have experienced no embarrassment
to-day for the fact that fourteen years ago he had entered into this
vale of tears was not mentioned. True, his mother did kiss him a trifle
more warmly than usual, and an additional salutation, which she
instantly repressed, seemed trembling on her tongue. But there was
nothing else out of the ordinary.

Therefore he sat down and ate his breakfast with the chagrined
conviction that for the first time in history the anniversary to which
he had habitually looked forward with such keen pleasure had slipped his
parents' memory. It was strange that each of them should have forgotten.
Even if his father had been too busy about the shipment of the gems
expected from Holland to bear it in mind, one would have thought his
mother would have remembered. She was, to be sure, much taken up with
doing over the library and fussing about curtains which she declared she
never would be able to match. But for all that you would have thought
she would recall that May twentieth was coming. It wasn't at all like
her to let her own interests crowd out those of her family.

Perhaps they thought he was getting too old for birthdays. That would be
a tragedy indeed, since it would mean that he never would have any more
presents. Oh, i