A secret! A secret!
Who can guess the secret?
There’s blue in it and green in it,
And bird-song lilting gay,
There’s dancing and there’s laughter
And there’s mirth and merry play.

One Friday, after the Secret Sanctum had been furnished as the girls had planned, the six were waiting for Adele under the elm-tree in the school-yard.

“Didn’t we have fun last Saturday!” chattered Betty Burd. “But I don’t know what we would have done if Bob Angel and Jack Doring had not carted those heavy things to the cabin for us.”

Bob Angel assisted his father after school-hours by delivering groceries, and he had readily consented to cart the mattress and boxes to the cabin for his sister, Bertha, and her friends.

“I’m so glad I found those bright-colored prints up in our attic,” said Doris Drexel. “They are some my grandmother had, and, with their queer, old-fashioned frames, they are just suited to our Sanctum.”

“I can’t get over admiring the china-closet and the book-case,” Betty declared. “I never dreamed that such pretty things could be made out of just orange boxes.”

Rosamond glanced at her wrist-watch as she exclaimed: “Here it is five minutes to the last bell. I never knew Adele to be so late before. What can have happened?”

“If Adele is late to-day,” said Doris Drexel, “it will break her perfect record. She hasn’t even been tardy a moment this whole term.”

“Ho! Here she comes now!” cried Peggy Pierce with a sigh of relief, for the girls would have been as sorry as Adele herself if the perfect record had been broken.

“What ever kept you so long, Della?” Rosamond called. “We’ve been waiting here for almost fifteen minutes.”

“Did you break a shoe-lace?” Doris Drexel inquired.

“Nary a bit of it,” laughed Adele when she could get her breath. “I happened to see a clump of violets in a sunny corner and I dug them up, roots and all, and took them over to Granny Dorset. She told me last week that she was eager for the first violets to bloom; that somehow the ache in her bones got better then, and since she can’t leave her bed to get them for herself, I thought that I would take them to her, and she was so pleased! I wish you might have seen her dear old eyes twinkle.”

“Oh, Adele, you’re always thinking of kind things to do,” Betty Burd declared. “I wish I were that way!”

“There’s the last bell!” called Peggy Pierce. “Forward! March!” But Adele detained them, exclaiming: “Wait, girls; I have the most beau-ti-ful secret to tell you, but I’ll have to keep it now until after school! Meet me under the elm-tree just as soon as ever you can.”

Then into their class-room they went, but all through the morning session they kept wondering and wondering what new fun Adele was planning. In fact, Betty Burd was thinking so much about it that she could not keep her mind on her lesson, and when Miss Donovan suddenly asked her to name the capital of England, Betty was so confused that she answered, “Oh, it’s a secret!”

“A secret?” exclaimed the mystified Miss Donovan. Poor Betty blushed as crimson as a poppy, and the other six girls just had to laugh.

Then Betty explained that she had meant to say that London was the capital of England, but that she had been thinking of a secret.

When at last the class was dismissed, the Sunny Seven, as Adele called them, hurried out to the elm-tree, and Betty Burd exclaimed: “Wasn’t Miss Donovan a dear not to keep me in! I was so afraid that she would, and then I couldn’t have heard the secret.”

“Like as not you deserved to be kept in,” Bertha Angel remarked, “but we are glad that you weren’t.”

“Now, Adele, do tell us that secret,” pleaded Peggy Pierce, and they all listened with eager anticipation.

“Look at me hard,” Adele said, “and see if you can guess my secret.”

The six girls turned her around and even examined the big ribbon bows on her golden-brown braids, but they couldn’t find a clue to the secret.

“Don’t I look a little bigger or older or something?” Adele asked.

“Oho-ho! I know!” cried Doris Drexel, clapping her hands gleefully. “Adele, it’s your birthday.”

“You are warm,” Adele replied, “but it isn’t my birthday yet. It’s just going to be. Think of it, girls! Next week I shall be thirteen years old and almost a young lady.”

“Shall you do your hair up?” asked Rosamond Wright, whose dearest desire was to wear her curls twisted on high.

“Dear me, no,” laughed Adele. “I shall wear braids until I’m twenty, I guess.”

“Oh, Della, I do hope you’re going to have a party,” exclaimed Peggy Pierce. “I have the sweetest new dress. It’s white muslin, all scattered over with pink rosebuds, and I’m just pining to be asked to a party so that I can wear it.”

“Yes, I’m going to have a party,” Adele replied, “but you won’t be able to wear that dress to it, Peggy; it’s going to be a different sort of party.”

“Oh-o-o!” came a wailing chorus. “Aren’t we going to be invited?”

“Not exactly,” laughed their favorite, “and yet I shall expect you all to be there.”

“Oh, Adele!” Bertha Angel exclaimed. “You are so mysterious and so provoking! Do you expect us to come to your party without an invitation?”

“Of course not,” Adele replied, “and I won’t keep you guessing any longer. This is the way of it. Yesterday I went over to the orphan asylum to read stories to the very little children, as I do every Sunday, and when I was coming out I passed what I supposed was an empty class-room. The door was open a crack, and I thought that I heard some one crying inside. I looked in and saw a girl of about our own age sobbing as hard as ever she could. I had never seen her before. I went nearer and said, ‘Little girl, can I do something to help you?’ At first she only cried the harder, but I sat down beside her, and at last she told me that her mother and father were both dead and that the people she had been living with couldn’t keep her any longer, and so they had sent her to the orphans’ home. I told her that she would like it there because the matron was so kind.

“‘Yes,’ she sobbed, ‘I shall like it, I guess, but next week Saturday will be my birthday, and mother always gave me a party, but now nobody cares.’

“I felt as though I would have to cry, too, but I knew that would not be the way to cheer her up, so I asked her to take a walk with me and I showed her the pleasant places around the Home. She loved the woods, she said, and when we went back, an hour later, I guess she felt better, but right then and there I decided that this year, instead of having a party for myself, I would give a surprise birthday-party for Eva Dearman.”

“Oh, Adele!” Gertrude Willis exclaimed. “I am so sorry for that poor orphan girl. May we help give the party?”

“That’s just what I hoped that you would want to do,” said Adele happily. “I must skip home now and do my practicing, but to-morrow will be Saturday, so let’s meet in our Secret Sanctum at three o’clock and make our plans.”