ver the
oaken landing and stairs, up which the children followed Milly to the
dressing-room and the parlors, where the fires glowed in the cheerful
grates, and the lamps in beautiful tinted globes made a brightness that
seemed to the children more wonderful than day.

Now it is not so much about Milly's party as about one little girl who
was in it that I am going to tell you; because parties are very
commonplace things, and little girls, at least some little girls, are
not.

When the party had been going on for a long time, and the children were
being taken in to supper--and a very nice supper, too, with plenty of
milk, white bread, and sparkling jellies--one of the largest girls
stopped with Milly Holland for a moment where the staircase turned and
looked down upon the oaken landing. There stood the tall, old-fashioned
clock, looking very old and rather proud in its rich dark case, and
against it leaned a very little girl, not more than eight years old,
with a good deal of brown hair, and big gray eyes. Her folded hands and
her little cheek were pressed against the edge of the clock case. The
hall lamp from the bracket overhead shone on her hair and her crumpled
dress, and left her face in the shadow.

"Who's that?" asked the other girl of Milly.

"What! don't you know Caddy Podkins?" said Milly. "The idea of mother
asking such a baby as _that_ to _my_ party!"

Then the two girls went to supper. The supper-room was farther from the
landing than the parlors, and when the door had closed, the hall became
quite still. All at once Caddy thought the clock ticked louder than she
had ever heard a clock tick in all her life before. And she was quite
right, for the clock was trying to speak to Caddy, and except just to
state, without a single needless-word, the hour, this clock had never
tried to speak before. But the clock liked Caddy very much. It had seen
that Caddy was very bashful, and that the other children took hardly any
notice of her, or any care for her pleasure, and it liked the feeling of
Caddy's little cheek and warm hands upon its side.

Now Caddy had a little invisible key. It was finer than refined gold,
and stronger than adamant (which is the very hardest kind of stone
there is, you know), and there was not a lock--no, not even the lock
of the tongue of a clock--which could help opening to Caddy's little
key. Caddy herself knew nothing about this key, not even its long
name--_Im-ag-i-na-tion_. But the k