“There now! You’re done!” exclaimed Hannah, the nurse, giving Priscilla an approving pat and looking her over carefully from head to heels to see that nothing was amiss. “Now you’ll please to sit in this chair, like a little lady, and not stir, else you’ll rumple your pretty frock and then your mamma will be displeased, for she will want you to look just right before all the company down-stairs. Your grandpapa and grandmamma, and uncles and aunts, and Cousin Cicely—all the line folks who have come to take dinner with you and bring you lovely birthday presents. So up you go!”

Priscilla suffered herself to be lifted into the big armchair without a word and then sat obediently still, watching Hannah, as she bustled about the nursery “tidying up” as she called it.

Priscilla was a very quiet little girl, with great, solemn brown eyes, a small, sober mouth and a quantity of soft, bright hair that had to be brushed so often it made her eyes water just to think of it.

This was her eighth birthday. Now, when strangers asked her, as they always did, “how old she was” she could reply “Going on nine,” but she would still be compelled to give the same old answer to their next familiar question of, “And have you any brothers and sisters?” for Priscilla was an only child.

She sometimes wondered what they meant when they shook their heads and murmured, “Such a pity! Poor little thing!” for when Theresa, the parlor-maid, whom, by the way, Priscilla did not like very much, came up to the nursery and saw all her wonderful toys and the new frocks and hats and coats that were continually being sent home to her, she always said sharply and with a curl of the lip: “My! But isn’t she a lucky child! It must be grand to be such a rich little thing!” For how can one be “a pity” and “lucky” at the same time? and “a poor little thing” and a “rich little thing” at once?

Priscilla did not like to enquire of her mamma or Hannah about it, for she had once been very sick with a pain in her head, and the doctors had come, and she was in bed for a long time, and after that she had been told not to ask questions. And whenever she sat, as she loved to do, very quietly on the nursery couch, trying to puzzle things out for herself, Hannah would come and bid her “stop her studyin’” and go and play with her dolls, explaining that “little girls never would grow big and strong and beautiful like their Cousin Cicely if they sat still all the time and bothered their brains about things they couldn’t understand.” So it was not as hard for Priscilla as it might have been for some other little girls to “sit still like a lady” in the big armchair, and she was just beginning to have “a nice time with her mind” when there was a knock upon the door and James the butler, announced in his grand, deep voice, “Dinner is served. And your mamma says as ’ow she wishes you to come down, miss.”

She waited for Hannah to lift her to the floor, bade her good-bye very politely and then tripped daintily down the long halls and softly carpeted staircases to the dining-room, where there was a great stir and murmur of voices and what seemed to Priscilla a vast crowd of people. She knew them all well, of course; grandpapa and grandmamma; Uncle Arthur Hamilton, who was the husband of Aunt Laura; Uncle Robert and Aunt Louise Duer; dear Cousin Cissy, and her papa and mamma. They were all very old and familiar friends, but when they were collected together they seemed strange and “different” and frightened her very much. Her heart always beat exceedingly fast as she moved about from one to the other saying, “Yes, aunt” and “No, uncle,” so many times in succession. When she entered the room now the hum of voices suddenly stopped and then, the next instant, broke out afresh and louder than ever.

“Dear child! Why, I do believe she’s grown!”

“Bless her heart, so she has!”

“But she doesn’t grow stout.”

“Nor rosy.”

“Come, my pet, and kiss grandpapa!”

“What a big girl grandmamma has got! Eight years old! Just fancy!”

“Do let me have her for a moment. I must have a kiss this second.”

Priscilla heaved a deep sigh under the lace of her frock at which, to her embarrassment, all the company laughed and dear Cousin Cicely said:

“She’s bored to death with all our attention and I don’t wonder. It is a nuisance to have to kiss so many people. There, Priscilla darling, you shall sit right here, next to Cousin Cissy, and no one shall bother you any more.”

Dinner down here in the big dining-room was always a very slow and tiresome affair in Priscilla’s estimation. She liked her own nursery-dinner best, which she ate in the middle of the day, with Hannah sitting by to see that the baked potatoes were well done and the beef rare enough. This “down-stairs-dinner” to-night was no less long and wearisome than usual, but at last it was done and then Priscilla was carried in state to the drawing-room upon the shoulder of tall Uncle Arthur Hamilton, and at the head of a long procession of laughing and chattering relations who, she knew, would stand around in a great, embarrassing circle and watch her as she examined the beautiful birthday gifts they had brought her.

And behold! There was a large table in the middle of the room, and it was covered with a white cloth and piled high with wonderful things. Dolls that walked and dolls that talked; books and games and music-boxes. A doll’s kitchen and a doll’s carriage; a little piano with “really-truly” white and black ivory keys, and all sorts and sizes of fine silk, and velvet boxes containing gold chains and rings and pins, with pretty glittering stones.

Uncle Arthur lifted Priscilla from his shoulder and set her down upon the floor before the table, where she stood in silence, looking wistfully at her new treasures, but not quite knowing what to do about them.

“See this splendid dolly, Priscilla! She can say ever so many French words. Don’t you want to hear her?”

“Listen to this lovely music-box, Priscilla! What pretty tunes it can play!”

“Don’t you want me to hang this beautiful chain around your neck, Priscilla? It will look so pretty on your white dress.”

Priscilla gazed from one thing to another, as they were thrust before her and tried to be polite, as Hannah had told her to be, but she felt dizzy and bewildered and could only stand still, clasping and unclasping her hands in front of her.

“Why, I don’t believe she cares for them at all,” said Aunt Louise in a surprised and disappointed tone.

“Embarrassment of riches, perhaps,” suggested Uncle Robert, her husband.

“Here, Priscilla, dear,” broke in Aunt Laura. “See this wonderful new dolly that can walk! Now, you must certainly play with her. Why, when I was a little girl I would have been delighted if my uncles and aunts had given me such splendid things! I would not have stood, as you are doing, and looked as if I did not care for them.”

Priscilla obediently took the accomplished dolly from her Aunt Laura’s hands and held it loosely in her arms, but she did not make any attempt to “play with her prettily.” Aunt Laura frowned.

Grandmamma came forward and passed her arm about Priscilla’s waist. “Our dear little girl ought to be very happy with so many people to love her,” she said, softly. Somehow her tone, kind as it was, made Priscilla feel she was being naughty because she was not so happy as grandmamma thought she ought to be. She would have liked to be obedient and to please her relations, but if she was not doing so by being very proper, and saying, “Yes, aunt,” and “No, uncle,” in answer to their questions, she did not know what else they wanted. It puzzled and bewildered her, and then the first thing she knew, the dolly had fallen from her arms to the floor with a crash, where it lay foolishly kicking its legs and sawing the air with its arms, while she herself was sobbing big tears over her nice clean dress in a way that she knew would most dreadfully provoke Hannah.

In a twinkling she was in her mother’s arms, and there was a great stir and murmur of voices about her. No one could understand what was the matter.

“She must be sick,” observed Aunt Laura.

“Perhaps something about the doll hurt her—a pin in its clothes maybe,” suggested Aunt Louise.

“Doesn’t she like toys?” asked Uncle Robert.

“We grown-ups frighten her, poor youngster. There are a good many of us, you know, and you are not all as handsome as I am,” laughed Uncle Arthur, mischievously, “are they, Priscilla?”

“Well, she certainly is an odd child not to be perfectly delighted with so many nice things. When I was a little girl——” reiterated Aunt Laura.

But just then Hannah appeared at the door and Priscilla’s mother murmured in her ear, “Say ‘Good-night all,’ my darling, ‘and thank you for giving me such a happy birthday.’”

“Good-night all, and thank you for giving me such a happy birthday,” whispered Priscilla with a sobbing catch in her voice.

“Don’t mention it,” responded Uncle Arthur, bowing low.

And then Hannah led her off to bed.

But that was by no means the end of her birthday, although she thought it was. Long after she was safely asleep in her little brass bed the grown-up people down-stairs were still talking about her. It seemed so remarkable to them that she had not shown more interest in the beautiful things they had prepared for her.

“Priscilla was never a very demonstrative child,” said her mother a little sadly, as if she were excusing her.

“But her heart is in the right place, nevertheless,” her father declared.

“Oh, it isn’t that,” broke in Aunt Laura. “She is a dear little girl, of course, but—all I mean is, she doesn’t act as a child ought to act; as a healthy child ought to act. She ought to be full of spirits, jumping about and laughing and playing. Now when I was a little girl——”

“I don’t think you quite understand Priscilla, dear Aunt Laura,” a bright young voice interrupted quickly. “She is naturally a quiet, timid little thing. She would never be boisterous, but you are right in this, that she doesn’t act as a child of her age might be expected to act, and the reason is, she is lonely. She has never known other children. She has never learned to play. Now these presents here are all very fine in their way, but they do not really interest her, because she does not know how to use them.”

“But dear me,” observed Aunt Laura, “why doesn’t somebody teach her? I wound up the walking-doll for her myself——”

Miss Cicely smiled. “I do not mean that,” she replied. “You couldn’t teach her and I couldn’t, because—we’ve forgotten how. The only one who could teach her would be a little girl of about her own age; a playmate. Believe me, the best present we could give Priscilla would be a companion; a flesh-and-blood little girl who could share her pretty things, and who would teach her how to enjoy them.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Aunt Laura. “What a very curious creature you are, Cicely. Give Priscilla a present of a ‘flesh-and-blood little girl!’ ‘A playmate of about her own age!’ Fancy!”

“I know you all think I am too young to know anything about bringing up children,” continued Miss Cissy, “and you all, being older, are very much wiser than I am. But I remember when I was a little girl——”

“Stop right there, Cicely,” interrupted Uncle Arthur. “No one in this family but your Aunt Laura has any right to remember when she was a little girl.”

Pretty Cicely pretended to frown at him, but her merry eyes laughed in spite of themselves, though she went on at once: “I was the only child in the family then, just as Priscilla is now, and it was a very lonesome position, I assure you, so I can sympathize with her. I used to long and long for the chance to romp and play with other children of my own age, but I was always surrounded by a lot of servants whose business it was to see that I was very sedate and proper and who were made to feel that I was altogether too important and elegant a little personage to be allowed to associate with the rest of the world. So I saw from afar other children having jolly times and I had to be contented, myself, with my fine playthings and splendid clothes. They did not at all content me. I knew then, just as Priscilla does now, that such things cannot make one happy. Children are like grown-up people in this: that they are never really healthy or happy until they share their good things with some one else.”

“Hear! Hear!” cried Uncle Arthur, clapping his hands approvingly.

Cicely’s whole face was aglow with earnestness and hope as she concluded: “There! now, I have had my say and I am sorry it has been such a long one, but I simply had to speak out, you know.”

“But think of the chances there are of Priscilla’s catching chicken-pox and measles and influenza, if she plays with other children,” suggested Aunt Louise anxiously.

“Children nowadays are so shamefully ill-behaved. They are regular little ruffians. Fancy how wretched it would be if Priscilla caught their horrid habits and became pert and forward and unmannerly,” added Aunt Laura.

Cicely nodded brightly. “Yes, of course that is so,” she admitted, “but on the other hand, fancy how splendid it would be if Priscilla played with other children and caught happiness and health from them, and generosity and kindness and sympathy. Good things are catching as well as bad, don’t you think they are, Aunt Laura?”

This time Uncle Arthur did not cry “Hear! Hear!” but he came straight over to where Cicely sat and took her hand in his.

“Cissy, my dear,” he said, quite seriously, “let me congratulate you. You are the wisest member of the family, by all odds and,” with a twinkle in his eye, “for your sake I am glad I married your Aunt Laura. If Priscilla turns out as well as you have done the Duers will have no cause to be ashamed of their two representatives—even though they are ‘only girls.’”

But just here Priscilla’s mother spoke up:

“I wonder what your plan is, Cissy, dear,” she said. “We are anxious, of course, to do whatever is for Priscilla’s good and I can see that she may be lonely, living so entirely with older people, but—— Do you think a kindergarten——”

“No, dear Aunt Edith, that is not at all what I mean,” Cicely broke in quickly. “What I mean is, that Priscilla ought to have a playmate—a child—to live right here in the house with her; one who would rouse her up and keep her from growing moody and oversensitive. A little girl who would share her good things with her and to whom Priscilla would have to give up and give in once in a while. Each would learn from the other and I’m sure you would see that Priscilla would improve directly, in health and in every other way. Please, please, Aunt Edith, try my plan. I assure you it would work like a charm, if we got the right child and gave the experiment time.”

“We will!”

It was Priscilla’s father who spoke and, of course, his word settled the matter at once. But now the question arose where was “the right child” to be found? It came over Cicely with a sudden shock, that nothing less than a little cherub right out of the sky would suit all these extremely particular people, for no mere human child could possibly fulfil all their requirements.

Aunt Louise would insist upon her never, by any chance, being sick. Aunt Laura would demand that she always be perfectly quiet and faultlessly well-behaved. Aunt Edith would wish her to be older than Priscilla so Priscilla could rely upon her, and grandmamma desired her to be younger than Priscilla so Priscilla could learn to be self-reliant: and so it went on.

“As far as I can see, Cicely,” spoke up Uncle Arthur, teasingly, “this scheme of yours is first-rate! Quite as good, for instance, as the well-known recipe for cooking a hare, which begins ‘first catch your hare.’ In this case it is: first catch your child. It is clearly your place to produce the prodigy. Now then, my dear, let’s see what sort of a marvel you can discover. It will have to be a superfine article to be fit to associate with the great and only Hope (but one, that’s you) of the Duer family.”

“I tell you what it is,” suggested Cicely. “Let’s all try to find one. And the best, by common consent, shall be Priscilla’s playmate. Is it a bargain?”

There was a great chorus of “Yesses”; a lot of hand-shaking and laughing and fun, and very shortly after the company went home, while up-stairs Priscilla slept peacefully on in her pretty brass bed, never dreaming of the curious birthday present she was to receive in the course of the next few days.