, and she took her little sister in her arms with real remorse.

"No, darling, you shall go, and we will go together; but not always,"
she added presently. "I should like to go alone sometimes, Poppy, to have
a quiet talk with Mademoiselle."

CHAPTER XIV.

To-morrow was Poppy's birthday, and all day long there had been mysterious
whisperings and signs and nods, hasty dashes in and out of the house,
invasions of Mrs. Vercoe's and Mrs. Bennett's shops, and great
mysteriousness on the part of Ephraim, who had to make a special journey
to Gorley.

And all the time Poppy, with a little thrill of excitement at her heart,
went about pretending to see and hear nothing, and half wishing her senses
were not so acute.

Miss Charlotte was very vexed with herself. She had made an engagement
for the very afternoon of the great day, and could not get out of it.

"I am _so_ vexed I did not remember, dears," she said; "but it was so long
ago I was asked, and I had to accept or refuse then and there, and I
really did not realise what the date actually was. I should have liked,
above all things, to have been home with you on that day."

The children were very sorry too; but seeing Cousin Charlotte so vexed
they made light of their own disappointment.

Anna was vexed too. To her the birthday tea was the great feature of the
birthday, and she had, days before, with a great deal of trouble to keep
it a secret from the children, made and baked a beautiful birthday cake,
which now lay hidden away in a white cloth in a tin box in the copper in
the wash-kitchen.

On this day, the day before the great day itself, when she had for the
first time realised that the children would be alone on the important
occasion, her mind had grown very seriously troubled, so troubled that she
could think of nothing else, until suddenly a beautiful idea came into her
head, so beautiful an idea that Anna fairly gasped. Later on, when she
had really sorted out her plans, she went upstairs to a big box in her
bedroom which held untold stores of treasures, and searched until she drew
from the depths a box of little sheets of fancy note-paper and envelopes.
This was hid in the copper too, along with the cake; but only until the
children had all gone to bed and the house was quiet.

As soon as ever she was sure there would be no more rushes into the
kitchen that night, Anna got out the wooden box with 'Hudson's Soap
Powder' stuck all over it, in wh