xteen cents isn't much for two presents, is it? We'll have to put our
thinking caps on. Let me see. How would you like to make Mother a little
tidy for her rocking chair? I think I have a piece of honey-comb canvas
left that would be just about the right size--you might do a Greek
border with rose-colored worsted. It's fast work. You could do it
easily."

"Oh, Marian, you do think of the nicest things!" and Chicken Little got
up impulsively to give her a grateful hug.

"But Ernest will be harder--he wouldn't care for fancy work."

"He wants a new base ball--an awfully hard one like Carol's."

"Frank can get him that. I'll tell you, Chicken Little, I believe he'd
like a nice strong bag for his marbles--it won't be long till marble
time now. But, perhaps, we can think up something else."

"I wisht you'd come to my tea party, Marian."

"I'd be charmed to, and I'll bring my old doll, Seraphina. She is huge
and hasn't any nose left and only one eye. Will she be welcome in this
wounded state or had we better put her in a hospital?"

"Oh, Marian, will you?--I'd love to see her."

"She's down in the bottom of a trunk, but I am sure she would be
delighted to get out in the world again. What are you looking at with
those big eyes of yours, Katy?"

"I was just thinking she must be awful old."

"She is--frightfully--almost as old as I am. My aunt brought her to me
from Paris when I was just seven. She was elegant then--all pink silk
ruffles with a little wreath of forget-me-nots in her hair. I crowed
over all the children I knew because she was so fine, but I must be
getting home. Children dear, I wonder if your mothers would mind if you
ran down to the postoffice to mail this letter for me. I want it to get
off on the five o'clock train."

Chicken Little's boasted luck seemed about to fail her entirely on her
birthday morning. She got up late and was so excited over her little
remembrances that she almost forgot to get ready for school. She ran as
hard as she could, so hard she had a stitch in her side, but the last
child in the line was disappearing inside the school-house door, when
she was still half a block away.

She knew what that meant. Miss Brown had a harsh rule for tardy
pupils--they stayed one-half hour after school, rain or shine. And to
stay in a half hour on one's birthday with a party on foot was
unthinkable. Why it would be most dark when she got home! And her
mother--well, maybe her mother wouldn't s