IN WHICH THE HEROINE HAS A BIRTHDAY
As the weather brightened and warmed into midsummer, most of Philomène’s
free time was spent in the garden, and consequently with Sweet William.
It was on a morning towards the end of June that she awoke with the
delightful sensation that her birthday had come at last. Had she not
waited a whole year for it? By her plate at breakfast time lay a big box
of wild flowers, sent by the gardener’s wife at the Cushats. Godmother
had taught her the names of all sorts of flowers during her last summer
holidays, so that she recognised almost all in the box, but a certain
little white, blue and red pyramid was quite a stranger to her; she
therefore christened it “N. or M.,” like the person in the Catechism,
and N. or M. it remained to her ever afterwards, though later she knew
it to be a kind of wild orchid. The doctor gave her a sketch-book and a
whole box full of beautiful new pencils, and Miss Mills a book called
“Legends from River and Mountain.”
“I haven’t a notion what it’s about,” she said, apologetically, “but I
thought from the title that you might take to it, and it was written by
a queen.”
“A real queen!” cried Philomène, “as real as Marie Antoinette, or Mary,
Queen of Scots?”
“Quite as real,” replied Miss Mills, laughing, “and now you must look at
the beautiful pincushion that Nurse has made for you. Won’t it look nice
on your dressing-table?”
“Yes, and I will put the date of my birthday on it in pins,” said
Philomène, but Nurse shook her head.
“I wouldn’t put pins into it, Miss, if I were you,” she said,
reproachfully, “that would spoil it;” and Philomène with her arms about
the old woman promised, “I won’t, Nursie dear, indeed I never will.”
The morning of the birthday was blissfully spent in the making of
toffee, a rather hot occupation for June, no doubt, but Philomène’s
wishes were law throughout that day. It did not turn out to be nice
toffee when made, but it was not wasted, for Lilian Augusta used it to
light the kitchen fire, and said it was as good as any patent
fire-lighter. At dinner Philomène was allowed to carve the chicken
herself, though her carving proved as unsuccessful as her cookery. “But
as it’s my birthday I can have the liver!” she announced, triumphantly,
“and I do know where to find that—it is somewhere under its arms.”
All that afternoon Philomène sat sketching busily or reading in her new
story-book, nor did she forget before putting it away to make a note
both of its title, and of the names of its author and publisher, in a
little red leather pocket-book kept for that purpose. This custom had
been introduced by Godmother.
“If you are at all like me,” Isolde had said, “you will be very sorry as
you grow older to find that some of the dearest books of your childhood
have been thrown away, or given away, with or without your knowledge.
Your wise elders will say, ‘She is getting too old now ever to want to
read this or that again,’ and they will forget that just now you may be
neither young enough or old enough for the book, but that in a few more
years you will begin to grow younger again and want to read it, and then
it will be too late to recover it. You will remember the exact colour of
the binding, and how your favourite story in it began half way down on
the right hand page, but you will not remember who wrote it or who
printed it. Perhaps you will not even remember the name of the book, and
if you want it back again, you cannot very well write to a shop and say,
‘Dear Sirs, please send me a thin green book with a picture of a lizard
as the frontispiece, and the last story but one is the nicest of all.
Yours faithfully—’ So here is a little pocket-book, and I want you to
make a note of the titles of all the books you are fond of, with the
names of their authors and publishers, and even if you find it a bother
now and then to remember to write them down, I think you will be glad of
it later on.”
Just as Philomène was going to bed, a letter from Godmother arrived.
“My own little cushat,” wrote Isolde, “I am afraid you will have to wait
a little while before you can have your birthday present, for it is a
trap and a white donkey, and though you had better leave them at the
Cushats as parlour boarders when you are in London, they are to be your
very own all the same. I want you to come and stay with me, my little
bird, for July and August and part of September. You and I will get on
very well together in the summer, I hope, and take out the new white
Neddie for lots of drives. We shall have a great deal to tell each other
when we meet, but I have no time for more now. Goodbye, my bairnie. Love
and all good wishes from Godmother.”
It was when Philomène looked out of her bedroom window on the morning of
the day following her birthday, that she noticed a large fairy ring on
the lawn, and felt very much flattered, for by it she knew that the
fairies had not forgotten the occasion, but had given a ball in her
honour.