t she did not cook anything for supper, as she had
intended, but set out the contents of the basket beside the corn bread
left from dinner. Before they were through eating somebody called for
sis' Sheba to come quick, that Aunt Susan was having one of her old
spells.

"Like enough I won't get back for a good while," said Mammy, as she
hurriedly left the table. "Put Ivy to bed as soon as you wash her face,
John Jay, an' go yo'self when the propah time comes. Be a good boy now,
and don't forget to close the doah tight when you go in."

When Ivy was safely tucked away among the pillows, the two boys sat down
on the door-step to wait once more for the birthday Santa Claus. John
Jay repeated what the thoughtless fellow had said:

"If I don't get there by noon, it'll be because something has happened;
anyway, somebody'll be prancing along about sundown." In the week just
passed, Bud had come to believe in the birthday Santa Claus as firmly
as John Jay.

"Wondah wot he's doin' now?" he said, after a long pause and an anxious
glance down the darkening road.

Ah, well for those two trusting little hearts that they could not know!
He was sitting on the steps of the porch at Rosehaven with a guitar on
his knee, and smiling tenderly into Sally Lou's blue eyes as he sang,
"Oh, yes, I ever will be true!"

It grew darker and darker. The katydids began their endless quarrel in
the trees. A night-owl hooted dismally over in the woods. The children
stopped talking, and sat in anxious silence. Presently Bud edged up
closer, and put a sympathetic arm around his brother. A moment after, he
began to cry.

"What you snufflin' for?" asked John Jay savagely. "'Tain't yo'
buthday."

"But I'm afraid you ain't goin' to have any eithah," sobbed the little
fellow, strangely wrought upon by this long silent waiting in the
darkness.

"Aw, you go 'long to bed," said John Jay, with a careless, grown-up air.
"If anything comes I'll wake you up. No use for two of us to be settin'
heah."

Bud was sleepy, and crept away obediently; but the day was spoiled, and
he went to bed sore with his brother's disappointment.

John Jay sat down again to keep his lonely tryst. He looked up at the
faithless stars. They had failed to help him, but in his desperation he
determined to appeal to them once more. So he picked out the seven
largest ones he could see and repeated very slowly, in a voice that
would tremble, the old charm:

"Star-light, star bri