A borrowed sister

School began on the Monday after Labor Day, and so Jessie came back in time for Lois’s birthday. Lois was delighted to see her, although she and Ellen had had such a good time together that she had not missed Jessie half so much as she thought she should. One morning at school Ellen said, “The vegetables are ripe in Anne’s and my garden, and mother says I can ask you and Jessie to tea on your birthday.”

“What a lovely thing it is to have a witch kitten in the house!” Lois exclaimed enthusiastically. “I am sure that is why the vegetables got ripe just in time for my birthday.”

“Of course,” said Ellen.

Jessie and Lois could hardly wait for the afternoon of the party, and when it finally came, it was such a warm, pleasant day that to their great joy they could wear their white muslin dresses.

“Don’t you feel very old?” asked Ellen, as she greeted Lois and gave her as many kisses as her years demanded.

“No,” Lois answered, “I suppose I ought to, but I don’t.”

She felt very young and shy when she sat down at the supper-table and found herself placed, as the guest of honor, between Mr. Morgan and the formidable Amyas. He had grown very tall in the last year, and seemed much older than in the winter.

The table presented a unique appearance. In the middle was placed a dish of melons, cut in halves, while at the corners of the centrepiece, on which the dish stood, were small tumblers of radishes, and in front of Mr. Morgan was a delicious-looking salad, made of cucumbers and lettuce, with a cucumber vine encircling the dish.

“I arranged the table myself,” Ellen burst out. “Don’t you think it looks perfectly lovely?”

Lois had hardly tasted the first mouthful of her salad when the maid came to her with a letter.

“For me?” cried Lois. “How strange.”

“Some one must have heard you were here,” Amyas suggested.

Lois opened the envelope and found a pink ribbon inside, which just matched the sash she wore. There were also some lines, which ran as follows:—

Lois looked across the table at Ellen’s grown-up sister and smiled her thanks. She was delighted with the ribbon and almost as much pleased with the verse.

“How nice it must be to be able to write poetry!” she shyly confided to Amyas.

“Poetry! do you call that stuff poetry?” he asked. “If I only had a name that would rhyme with anything, I could make much better poetry for you. I’ll make some that will rhyme with your name,” and a little later he broke a momentary silence by repeating,—

“I shan’t be too old to play with dolls for a very long time,” Lois stated.

“I am glad of that,” said Amyas, “for I have a small present. Where is it?”—he felt in his pocket—“oh, here it is; I bought it for myself, and when I tried it on, mother insisted it was too small for me. What do you think, Lois?”

He gravely put on a doll’s hat, which was just the right size for Lois’s Betty. It was made of white straw and was trimmed with a blue ribbon, and a small feather was stuck in it.

Amyas looked so absurd with the tiny hat perched on top of his yellow hair that every one burst out laughing.

“Don’t you think it is becoming?” Amyas inquired, with a smirk and the conscious look in his blue eyes of an affected young lady. “Isn’t it provoking of mother to say it is too small? If you like it for one of your dolls, you can have it,” he said, presenting it to her with a piece of paper on which was written the verse he had just quoted.

“Oh, thank you so much,” said Lois.

“I bought it for Amyas,” Ellen said. “I took down Jean because she is just the size of Betty and fitted her, and I was so crazy to keep the hat myself that Amyas gave me one too, so Jean and Betty will have hats just alike.”

“Ellen is always fond of romancing,” said Amyas.

While Lois was still eating her salad the maid again brought her something. This time it was a bunch of sweet peas of variegated colors, and they were separated by a feathery green, so that they looked almost as if they were growing on the vines. Lois plunged her nose into them and inhaled the delicious fragrance. A card said, “For Lois, with best wishes for a happy new year, from S. T. Morgan.”

“I can’t write verses,” said Mrs. Morgan, “but I picked these sweet peas for you, Lois, with my own hands.”

The next gift was a tiny little box full of cotillon pencils of different colors. There was a verse with them that ran:—

This was Mr. Morgan’s contribution, and it seemed to Lois the sweetest poem of all.

There were rolls and cold chicken with the salad, and when this course was finished, the melons were passed around with some cake with cocoanut frosting. Lois was beginning to think she was not going to have any more presents when the maid handed her another envelope. Inside was a charming hand-painted paper doll made by Anne, and these lines were written in Anne’s clear hand:—

Lois was delighted. The poetic gift of the Morgan family filled her with amazement.

“Anne painted in the fan on account of the rhyme,” Ellen confided to the company. “We had such fun, all writing the verses together the other night, only mother and Reuben can never write any. I am crazy to have you hear my poem.”

Presently a very large bundle was placed on the table near Lois, and she began to open it eagerly. She undid one wrapping-paper after another, until finally she came to a moderate sized candy box.

“Candy; how nice!” said Lois, looking appreciatively at Ellen.

“I hope it will be your favorite kind,” said Ellen. “Guess what it is.”

“Chocolate peppermints,” said Lois.

She opened the cover, pulled up the paraffine paper, and underneath were disclosed two small cucumbers. The disappointment was so great that Lois at first could not appreciate the joke. Ellen’s verse was written in her scrawling hand.

“Amyas bet me a doll’s hat that I couldn’t make a verse with a rhyme in it to my own name, but I did,” said Ellen triumphantly.

There was only one more present, a small box of chocolate peppermints from Reuben. There was no verse with it, only, “Lois from Reuben,” in Mrs. Morgan’s attractive handwriting. Reuben was down at the other end of the table next his mother, and Lois could not get enough courage to thank him. She would wait until after supper. Reuben was even shyer than she was; he was a little older than Lois, and did not have the charm of his older brother. Nevertheless, Reuben had been very kind to her when she had stayed with the Morgans in the winter, having taught her to skate, and yet she never saw him now without relapsing into her old fear of him, he was so silent and was apt to look so indifferent.

It happened that Reuben did not sit near Lois in the games they played after supper, so she had no chance to thank him for his present. Mrs. Morgan had said that one of the boys would see the children home, and Lois thought if it were Reuben, she would gather courage to thank him then, but it proved to be Mr. Morgan who walked back with them. Amyas came out to the front door politely, but Reuben was nowhere to be seen.

Her pleasure in Reuben’s gift had been spoiled by the fact that the inscription had been in his mother’s writing. Lois was sure he had not bought the candy for her himself, but that Mrs. Morgan had felt it would seem rude if each member of the family were not represented.

“Mother, we had such a lovely time!” Lois said when they reached home. “I had seven presents and five poems,” and she proceeded to show her treasures, and to give an animated account of the evening.

Mrs. Page was most sympathetic.

“Mother, you don’t think it is any matter if I don’t thank Reuben, do you?” Lois asked. “I am sure it was really his mother’s present.”

“I don’t think so,” said Jessie. “I am sure it was only that he was ashamed of his bad handwriting.”

“Well, at any rate, it is only polite to thank him,” said Mrs. Page, entirely unaware of what a desperate task she was setting her daughter.

“Of course you ought to,” said Jessie, who would not in the least have minded thanking a schoolful of children.

“I shall have to thank Reuben to-day,” Lois thought the next morning, and this reflection was such a weight at her heart that the glorious September sunshine seemed clouded. When Lois reached school and saw Reuben come in, her heart began to beat very fast. He had a stolid expression, and when recess came he went out immediately. As the day wore on, it seemed more and more impossible to thank him, and when two unhappy days had dragged themselves by, poor Lois felt that she would gladly have foregone all the glories of her birthday, if by this means she could escape thanking this member of the Morgan family for his gift.

“I must do it,” she thought. “Mother said so, and it is rude not to, but it does not seem as if I could.”

The longer she put it off, the harder it was. On Saturday Lois and Jessie went to the Morgans’ to play croquet with Anne and Ellen, and while they were in the midst of a game Reuben appeared, asking some question about his tennis racquet.

“Now,” thought Lois, “I must do it,” but he was off again like a flash before the words left her lips.

On Monday morning, when she and Jessie came out at recess, she saw Reuben and his great friends, Joel Carpenter and Jack Brown, on the steps of the Baptist meeting-house, which was next to the school-house. They were deep in conversation, evidently discussing some plan. Without giving herself time to think, Lois left Jessie and went forward quickly. The boys were standing on the third step, and so were just above her. Clasping her hands behind her and with upturned face, she said hurriedly,—

“Reuben, I thank you very much for my birthday present.”

Then she hastily turned her back on him and fled.

“Gee!” burst from Joel Carpenter’s lips, as Lois hurried down the street.