The Birthday

Elizabeth sat in her little blue room, and shivered.

It was the afternoon of her birthday, and although she hadn't mentioned the fact to any one, she had dressed herself to do honour to the occasion. Every undergarment, chemise, camisole, and petticoat, was of a soft, flesh-tinted silk. Her dress was of the finest white muslin trimmed only with infinitesimal tucks and Valenciennes beading, and she was wearing a blue ribbon sash with a big butterfly bow at the back.

"My pride ought to keep me warm," she thought, "what a pity it doesn't."

Before she bought her silken lingerie she had deliberated a long time between that magnificence and a light blue wool sweater and had finally succumbed to the lure of the lacy garments which had taken every penny of her month's allowance and all that she was allowed to borrow on her next.

She looked around her room with a glow of satisfaction, having only that morning put the finishing touches on it. She had draped the windows with an old-fashioned print, a blue groundwork with tiny pink roses wandering over it, that her grandmother had produced from an ancient chest stored with remnants of the popular fabrics of an older generation. The furniture she had chosen was mostly painted black, or a very dark stain. She had found another flag-bottomed chair, a twin to the first, and a wonderful old settee on rockers, which had a deep seat with an adjustable rack running along the outside of it, as if to prevent its being used except for the one person who chose to sit in the space that was clear at the end. This she had piled with cushions made from little square pillows that her grandmother kept for "children who came a-visiting." Her desk and her spinning wheel were in opposite comers, and a miniature organ, the keyboard of which comprised two octaves exactly, occupied a position under the eaves between the two farther windows.

The morning mail had brought her a writing-case from her mother, a check for five dollars from her father, and a letter, her first, from her Buddy. She had taken a high resolution not to shed one tear on her birthday, and the mild faces of Faith and Charity smiled down on her as if to strengthen her will.

"Hope looks a little teary, herself," she said.

There was a sound of altercation on the stairway that led directly out of the passage from the dining room of her new suite.

"You shall come upstairs, Grandmummy, and give it to her yourself. She doesn't want your present by way of me. She wants it handed out, with your own personal and private blessing. Besides, I've got a present for her myself. I can't give her two presents."

Peggy Farraday, with her hands sternly set on Grandmother Swift's shoulders, marched her firmly into Elizabeth's chamber.

"Here's Grandmummy with a beautiful present for your birthday. She was going to send it upstairs by me, but I declined the honour."

"Young folks like to open packages by themselves, without anybody standing around counting the Ohs and Ahs, and waiting to be thanked for something that may not exactly suit. If Elizabeth likes what I've made her, I guess she can make out to tell me so." Grandmother, entirely unruffled by the recent coercion to which she had been submitted, put down a bulky tissue-wrapped package and departed.

"Isn't she funny?" Peggy said. "But do open it. I can hardly wait to see what you think of it. It's copied from one of mine, the only sweater I've ever really loved. And it's in your colour, and everything."

Elizabeth, scarcely crediting her senses, shook out from the folds of tissue the lovely, fleecy garment of her dreams, a wool sweater in her own colour of "Heaven's blue." She gave it one comprehensive glance, then she slipped after her grandmother, caught up with her halfway down the stairs, and kissed her on the nape of an astonished neck.

"You're not a grandmother, you're an angel," she said, and flew back, in a panic, to Peggy.

"Here's my present," that young lady informed her. "It's something very practical, but I made it myself. I thought you might like it. I always give away the kind of thing I adore, don't you? That's doing the very best you can to show love—and one person's sure to be suited."

"It's a laundry bag," Elizabeth said, "and I haven't got one. You dear." She put out her hand toward Peggy, and missed her. Then they both put out their hands together, and kissed.

"The beauty of this creation is that you don't have to fish down into it," Peggy explained. "It buttons all the way across the bottom, and can be dumped that way. I made the buttonholes myself."

"And it's my colour, too. Have you made this since you were here last week?"

"No, I made it the first week I came down, to be sure to have it ready."

"Before you even saw me. How did you know you'd like me well enough to give it to me when it was done?"

"I was willing to take my chances. When I heard about your brother being sick, and your disappointment about the cottage, I thought you might be feeling kind of low when you first got here. So I prepared for it."

"How kind you are! How kind everybody is."

"Well, don't get the weeps. See here, do you know what this bar on this settee was put on for? It's a kind of a cradle arrangement. Mother makes up baby's bed on the lower end, puts up the bar, sits herself up at the head, and rocks and knits. Grandmother told me. She was rocked there herself when she was a baby. She remembers having scarlet fever on it. Aren't these old things fascinating? You're an awfully lucky girl to have grandparents like this. Mine live in a Back Bay apartment, and are just like everybody else, only a lot more so."

"You're a lot nicer than I am," Elizabeth said, suddenly.

"Well, I don't have such nice clothes. I thought you might like this clo', though." Peggy stood up to be admired. "It's my best bib and tucker. See, this is the bib," she indicated the square of cobwebby lace and lawn under her bronze chin, "and this is the tucker." She turned around, to show its counterpart in the back. "That's really what I bought it for, I couldn't decide between this pink linen and a gray dotted swiss until I realized that this was a bib and tucker. Which of course settled it at once. By the way, I know something very funny." Peggy barely took a breath between sentences. "I wonder if you know it, too. My sister Ruth knows your brother John quite well. They wrote to each other all the time that he was abroad. I just found out that he was your brother by the merest accident."

"You don't mean that Ruth Farraday is your sister! Why, Buddy's known her for years."

"Can't he have known my sister for years?"

"Yes, I suppose so, but it doesn't seem possible. I thought he met that girl in Boston."

"I live in Boston. If you've got a sample of your brother's handwriting, I can prove to you that my Ruth is the girl. I've taken in his letters for years."

Elizabeth produced the precious morning missive by the simple process of diving into the neck of her blouse. Peggy bent over the letter.

"It's the same," she said. "Oh, is he going to be an awful lot better soon? Ruthie has been dreadfully worried, I know, though she hasn't said much about it. She's the still member of the family, you see."

"What does she look like?"

"Oh, she's darlingly pretty, with great blue eyes and long golden lashes, and lovely colour that comes and goes, and she dresses sort of quaintly. She looks well in fringes and sashes and droopy things. I have to wear boys' clothes, almost, to set off my peculiar style of beauty, but you mustn't judge Ruthie by me. She's really a star."

"I think I'd like you best."

"Oh, you wouldn't if you could see Ruth. You'd just call for the incense and get busy worshipping. Everybody does."

"Has she many suitors?"

"Flocks and herds of them, but she doesn't care. She's kind of booky and dreamy. I don't mean she doesn't play a stunning game of tennis, and drive a car, and all that. She was motor corps for a while, and just crazy to get over, but Dad wouldn't hear of it. She'll be on the Cape bye and bye, and you can judge for yourself—I'm going to stay to supper, did you know it? Your grandmother sent over and invited me yesterday."

"I didn't know she even remembered my birthday, and now—only think!"

"She said to me that you were as blue as indigo, and putting up a good old struggle not to be, and she wanted you to have something pleasant to remember. That festive sound from below stairs is Judidy taking her turn at the handle of the ice-cream freezer. Do you know what they make the ice-cream of here? Just pure Jersey cream and fruit juice. I never tasted anything like it in my life."

"Didn't I hear something outside the door? It sounded just as if somebody had crept up and then crept away again."

"I didn't hear anything." Peggy threw open the door like a flash. "It was someone. More birthday surprises." She held up the package that an unseen hand had deposited on the threshold. "Open it quick, Elizabeth."

"Why, it's the Kipling 'Birthday Book,'" Elizabeth said, "that red-leather edition that I've been crazy for. Who do you suppose could have got it for me?"

"Who is there left to give you a present?"

"Nobody."

"Grandpa hasn't been heard from."

"Grandpa?"

"He's capable of anything. You don't half appreciate him, Elizabeth."

"I know I don't, Peggy, but I think I'm beginning to."

At the supper table they cornered him.

"Well," he admitted to Peggy, "I didn't know as you was upstairs, and I calculated to have Elizabeth blame it on you, but seeing as I'm caught, I'll own up to what I can't hide. I asked that girl in the apothecary shop in Hyannis what was the best kind of a birthday present, and she said a birthday book. I thought that was likely, so I asked to see one. She fetched out a Longfeller book and a Emerson book, and then I see this one standing all alone in a corner, and I took to it right away. Kipling, he writes about things I know something about. So I took him."

"And you are going to put your name in the book the first thing—before any one," Elizabeth declared: "What's your birthday?"

"What day is to-day?"

"The thirtieth of June."

"That's it."

"You don't mean that you were born on my birthday?"

"I always kind o' calculated you were born on mine."

When Judidy, attired in a purple and yellow silk gown over which she wore a black silk apron embroidered in blue forget-me-nots, rose to change the plates, with an expression of the most intense self-consciousness, Grandmother rose also, and the two exchanged signals.

"If I understood dumb show a little better," Grandfather said, slyly, "I might be inclined to think that Mother had something hid out in the kitchen, and Judidy had an errand in the pantry, but o' course I probably got it all mixed up."

"Well," Grandmother smiled, "seeing as the same thing has come o' the pantry every June thirtieth for forty-five years, it ain't anyways likely that you know anything about it." She bustled off to the kitchen, to reappear with a mound of ice-cream in which the strawberries were embedded, like so many perfect emeries.

"I like ice-cream better than anything in the world," Elizabeth said.

"I like it better than fathers and mothers and sisters and intimate friends, but not better than grandparents, especially not grandparents when one of them is celebrating its birthday," Peggy declared, "Now, I'm getting silly. Will somebody stop me, please? Oh, look! Look at Judidy!"

That flushed and excited young woman was approaching the table with the air of a standard bearer. In her arms she carried a big tray lined with white paper lace, and on it was set a marvellous erection of cake—a big round of chocolate confection lettered in pink, and further adorned by blazing pink candles. She placed it in front of Elizabeth.

"Time was when I had a cake to myself on my birthday," Grandfather grumbled.

"The time ain't so fur off." Grandmother appeared, with a round loaf of fruit cake on which one candle burned brightly. "You can take the candle right off if you want to. I only put it on for a joke. The cake is just what I always bake for you."

"Elizabeth can eat all the candle grease." Grandfather made an effort to frown, in which he succeeded only indifferently.

"I made it myself," Judidy cried, as Elizabeth counted her candles, "fourteen, and one to grow on."

"And did you make all the letters—'Elizabeth With Love?'—I think that's the nicest thing any birthday cake ever said on it."

"I was going to put on 'Elizabeth-aged-fourteen,' and then I thought that the candles would tell how old you were," the blushing Judidy hovered over her masterpiece, "and then I thought it was better to put on a kind of a message. I couldn't write a very long one, but I guess that says just as much as a whole sheet of paper."

"How did you make the letters so clear?"

"With a cornycopia. You colour your white frosting with strawberry juice, and then you make this here cornycopia out of letter paper, and then you sort of dribble it along and write with it."

"It looks lovely," Elizabeth said. "Thank you. Thank you, Judidy."

"Don't let your ice-cream melt," Peggy warned.

"You haven't let yours melt," Grandmother said, putting out her hand for the empty dish Peggy was waving.

"I never had all the ice-cream I wanted," Peggy acknowledged, sadly. "I never shall have, I know I shan't, because I can't hold it."

When Elizabeth made her wish, and blew out her candles, tears of pure delight stood in Judidy's eyes.

"I've give you luck," she said. "Oh, I hope it was a good wish!"

"It was the best wish anybody could wish," Elizabeth smiled. "I shall never forget this birthday, and this cake, Judidy, nor any of the dear things that have been done for me."

That night, as her grandmother tucked her into bed, she caught one of the kindly hands and clung to it.

"That was the most beautiful sweater in all the world," she said. "Do you think I could go down and kiss Grandfather good-night, too?" she asked, shyly.

"I guess it could be managed. I'll go downstairs with you, and see."

And presently Grandfather, with his glasses sitting low on his nose, and his nose in the morning paper, was attacked from behind and kissed breathlessly; but when Elizabeth tried to escape, she found herself caught by a blue dimity sleeve, and drawn into an energetic embrace.

"No, you don't," he said, placing her on his knee. "You're going to set here a while, and talk to Grandpa."

But the eminence of his knee proved such an embarrassing vantage ground that he soon let her go.

"Good-night," she said, slipping her hand into his. "Good-night, Granddaddy, dear," and she kissed him again, a real kiss this time, as if he were her father, or Buddy.

"Well, well," he said, "well, well!" and sat holding her by the shoulders so long that he almost seemed to have forgotten she was there. Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her up the stairs again, tucking her into bed with a hand as accustomed as Grandma's.

"Fourteen years old and letting her grandfather put her to bed the way he did when she was a baby. Ain't you ashamed?" he asked, playfully, in a tone she had never heard him use before.

"No, I'm proud," Elizabeth said, and she meant it.

Under her pillow was her brother's letter, and she lit a flickering bedside lamp to read it by before she went finally to sleep. It was a short letter, slanting down the paper, as he was not yet able to sit up in his bed long enough to write properly. He said:

Dear Sister-on-her-birthday:

I'd be willing to eat a German helmet to be able to spend this day with you. But the U. S. base hospital—base is the word—has got me for the present. I send you my respects, and fourteen and one half kisses to grow on.

For the love of Michael, don't get priggish in your old age. Some of your letters have made me wonder if there was nobody home where my sister lived, but lately they've seemed more the real thing. Get acquainted with your grandfather and grandmother. Grandfather once told me that he had come to the conclusion there was only one person in the world he had to keep an eye on, and that was himself. Good talk, Sis.

Which endeth the lesson.

Buddy.

As she tucked the letter back in its envelope, she realized that the sheet which had been wrapped around it to prevent its scrawly surface from showing through the transparent envelope was not blank as she had at first supposed; she spread it out before her, thinking to find a postscript to her own letter, but it was not that. It was evidently a sheet of a letter begun and discarded. Elizabeth had read it before she realized that it was not meant for her eyes to see. "Sweetheart—Sweetheart—Sweetheart—" it ran, "I have never called you this, and I have no right to call you so now, or any other name. At least, not for many years to come. I'm done for. I love you, and I can't try for you. That's something the war has done for a lot—more——" Here it broke off, abruptly.

"Oh, Buddy, Buddy," Elizabeth cried, "I didn't mean to snoop. How perfectly, perfectly terrible!"

It was two in the morning before she slept. She lay wide eyed in the darkness, thinking of her brother and Peggy Farraday's sister. It couldn't be anybody else—she knew that much about Buddy. For the first time in her life she was feeling the weight of a trouble that did not make her want to cry.

"I guess that's what it means to be fourteen and grown up," she said.