During the recess period of a brilliant October day, Mahala spent her time inviting those pupils of her school who were her particular friends to attend her birthday party. At fourteen in appearance Mahala was what she had been destined to be from birth. Fourteen years of unceasing drilling, of constant care, of daily admonition on the part of Elizabeth Spellman had made habitual with her daughter an exquisite daintiness of person. The only criticism Jemima Davis had ever been known to make concerning Mrs. Spellman was that she was “nasty nice.” Mahala instinctively drew back from contact with anything that might soil her clothing or her person. While she was thus dainty concerning her exterior, she was equally cleanly and refined in the workings of her heart and her brain. Hers was an unusually active brain; her eyes were flashingly comprehensive. All her life she had been seeing and understanding a great many things that her father and mother never suspected that she had either seen or understood. But since her personal fastidiousness extended to her brain as well as to her body, the result made a composite that was wholly charming.

Mahala’s keen sense of humour kept her lips slightly curled, a dancing light in her eyes. She was always whispering to the anÆmic shadow at her elbow: “Oh, Edith, did you see?” “Did you hear?”

Almost always Edith did see and hear, but her interpretations and conclusions were scarcely ever the same as Mahala’s. The sour discontent of her really beautiful dark face came almost as a shock in contrast with Mahala’s person; while mentally the girls were even more unlike. Mahala always had a remedy, always had hope; Edith believed the worst of every one; so when she had leisure time she spent it looking for something worse that she might believe on the slightest pretext.

The result was that every one in the village thought they loved Mahala, and it was curious that this should have been a universal attitude because the particularly spiritual quality of the child’s beauty always had been enhanced by the most tasteful and expensive clothing, so that no other girl of the town could bear comparison with her. Because she always had been generous, always considerate, always just, and always mirthful, she was sure that she was among friends. Every pupil who had gone through seven years of schooling with her knew that her word was secure. If she talked of an incident at all, she could be depended upon to tell the truth. If she criticised an offender, she cut deep, but she did it with fairness. She never wore offensively her dainty clothing, so carefully selected for her in the Eastern cities where her father went to buy goods. She was quite capable of pulling off her coat on the street and allowing any of her girl friends to carry it home that a pattern might be cut from it.

The most shocking occurrence the town had to record concerning Mahala was that one day, in bitter winter weather, she had surrounded herself on the street with a circle of her girl friends and in their shelter deftly removed her exquisitely embroidered petticoat for the benefit of a schoolmate who was visibly shivering with cold. When Mahala, with watery eyes and a red nose, faced her mother that night and confessed what she had done, Elizabeth Spellman began by being shocked and ended by becoming bewildered.

“It was all right,” she said primly, “for you to give Susanna Bowers a petticoat, but you should have gone to the store to Papa and gotten one suitable for Susanna.”

Mahala looked at her mother intently.

“But, Mama,” she protested, “Susanna was chilling. She needed something that minute; my petticoat doesn’t care who wears it. It just loves to keep Susanna warm.”

A slow red suffused Elizabeth Spellman’s face.

“And you didn’t stop to consider,” she said coldly, “that all the hours of work I put upon that petticoat went there for my very own little daughter, and not for a girl who will not know either how to appreciate or how to care for it, and who will have nothing else suitable to wear with it.”

Mahala’s brightest light swept across her forehead.

“That’s exactly the truth, Mother,” she said emphatically. “I’ll tell Susanna about the borax and the rain water and how to wash her pretty new petticoat, and I’ll ask Papa to give me some more clothes for her, so the petticoat won’t feel so lonesome and ashamed of the things it’s with.”

When Elizabeth Spellman detailed this conversation to Mahlon that night, she had considerable difficulty in gaining either his comprehension or his credence. There are not many men in the world named “Mahlon,” while it is a curious coincidence that all of them who are, seem very similar. Every fastidious fibre in Mahlon Spellman’s being rebelled at the thought of the high grade of pressed flannel bearing the exquisite handwork that always had enfolded his child, being put on the person of any Susanna of the outskirts. Such a wonderful town as Ashwater had no business with outskirts; it had no business with men who were not successful; it had no business with women who were not thrifty and good housekeepers. It was possible for every human being to be comfortably housed, well dressed, and well fed, if they would exercise even a small degree of the personal efforts of which each one was capable. Mahlon felt outraged and he said so succinctly. He told his wife in very distinct terms that she had failed in her manifest duty. She should have sent Mahala to recover the garment at once.

Mrs. Spellman looked at Mahlon intently. She usually toadied to him because that was the well-considered attitude that as a bride she assumed to be the proper one; ordinarily it was effective, but there were occasions when she told Mahlon the unvarnished truth. This appealed to her as very nearly, if not quite, an Occasion.

“I did not tell her to go and bring it back,” she said very deliberately, “because I had grave doubts in my mind as to whether she would do it. I have never considered it the part of wisdom to begin anything with our child that I feared I should not be able to finish. There was something about the look in her eyes, the tones of her voice that told me that she had done what she thought was right. I did not feel equal to the task of convincing her that she was wrong.”

Mahlon Spellman habitually increased his height by rising on his tiptoes; in extremes he increased it further by running his fingers through his hair to stand it on end. He metaphorically relegated the whole race of Susannas to limbo by flipping wholly imaginary particles from his sleeves and wiping imaginary taint from immaculate fingers with an equally immaculate handkerchief. From this elevation and mental attitude, Mahlon glared accusingly at his wife. This was rather unusual; but the thing had occurred with sufficient frequency for Elizabeth to recognize its portent.

“I am constrained to admit,” she said deliberately, “that there are times, very rare times, when Mahala’s mentality so resembles yours that I am forced to confess myself unequal to the strain of controlling her. At such times I always have made a practice of sending her to you. Your superior judgment, your poise, and strength, will stand your child in good stead at such a time as the present.”

Thereupon Elizabeth courtesied low to her self-ordained lord and master and swept from the room, leaving him a defenseless, a flabbergasted man. In his soul Mahlon knew that he was no more capable of controlling Mahala when she was in that mental attitude which her mother sometimes described as “having her head set,” than was his wife. With hurried steps he began pacing the room. By the time Mahala entered, he was walking in nervous, flatfooted indecision; he had lost all height obtained by any subterfuge. He faced Mahala, and if his wife had been there to observe the interview, she would have been rejoiced to realize that Mahala was tiptoeing, while her father was on his soles. All the lofty attitude he had assumed with Elizabeth, vanished like river mist before an hour of compelling sunshine. Mr. Spellman was so undone that he nearly stuttered.

“Wh—what’s this your mother tells me about this disgusting Susanna business?” he asked as Mahala stood slim and straight before him.

Her lips were curved in their very sweetest smile, but far back in the depths of her eyes there was a cold gray light that Mahlon Spellman did not recall ever having seen there before. He realized with a severe mental shock exactly what his wife had meant when she said that there were times when she did not force matters with Mahala.

But it was the girl’s lips that were speaking, and the lips were sweetly saying: “How right you are, Papa! Isn’t it disgusting and absurd, in a town where there is as much money and as many comfortable people as there are in this town, that any child should be started to school so thinly clad that her teeth are chattering and her hands blue and stiff?”

Mahlon tried to recover some least degree of his lost attitude.

“That girl’s father never did an honest day’s work in his life.”

He tried to thunder it; he did succeed in making it impressive.

“That’s exactly the truth,” agreed Mahala instantly. “He never did, he never will. That’s the reason why every one should make a point of seeing that Susanna has warm and comfortable clothing until she can get enough education so that she will be able to teach or do something that will help out her mother and her little brothers and sisters. I was just coming to you about it when Mother came to my room to suggest that I talk it over with you. I want you to tell about Susanna at the next board meeting of the church. I want you to tell those people plainly how narrow-minded and how selfish they are and what a disgrace it is to the whole town to have a member of their church trying to go to high school so thinly clad that she is stiff and blue—and she is one of the very best scholars in our class, too. Mind, I have to study good and hard to keep ahead of her and once or twice, I wouldn’t have had my problems if she had not held up her slate and let me see how to begin a solution. I owe her that petticoat all right, Father.”

Mahlon Spellman stood very still. He wanted to say something scathing. He had intended to be extremely severe about his daughter doing such an unprecedented thing as to remove her petticoat on the street. He wanted to tell her that she should be ashamed to accept help from anything so low down in the social world as a Susanna. But some way, memory performed a kaleidoscopic jump, so that he saw himself in crucial moments looking anxiously toward the slate of some of his fellow pupils. Then it struck Mahlon like a blow that he never, in his life before, had admitted even to himself that he had done this; but Mahala was facing him with perfectly frank eyes, acknowledging her obligations.

What he said was not in the very least what he had contemplated saying.

“The next time you feel that you owe any one a petticoat, come and tell me,” he said. “There are some suitable ones of heavy stamped felt in dark colours that many of the girls of Susanna’s age and size are wearing. It is scarcely fair to your mother that hours of painstaking work she has spent upon you, in an effort to express her love for you, should be discarded by you without a thought of her.”

Mahala’s eager face showed deep concentration.

“If that’s the way you and Mama feel about it, Papa,” she said quietly, “I’ll pay for one of the felt skirts from my monthly allowance, and I’ll go to-morrow and ask Susanna to accept it instead of Mother’s beautiful work. Certainly I didn’t intend to hurt Mother’s feelings or yours.”

Now this was precisely the thing that Mahlon Spellman had determined that Mahala should do, yet when she, herself, proposed making that trip, it touched his egotism from an entirely different point of view. He felt soiled and contaminated, even at the thought of such a thing, when he really came to picture his daughter, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, as being placed in such a humiliating position.

“You will do nothing of the kind,” he said grandiloquently.

The strain on his tiptoes was crucial, the gesture that ran through his flattened hair raised it beautifully.

“You must learn to think before you do a thing in this world,” he admonished Mahala. “I should consider it distinctly humiliating to me, to have a daughter of mine go and ask to be given back a gift that she had seen fit to make. Since Susanna has the petticoat, she must keep it. Simply fix in your consciousness the idea that the next time my daughter is not to be like the foolish little grasshopper that refused to look before it leaped, and so found itself in trouble.”

There was a bewildered look in Mahala’s eyes. Her teeth were set rather hard on her under lip. The breath she drew was deep. She turned from her father and laid her hand upon the door.

Then she faced him again: “I think,” she said quietly, “that it would save Susanna’s pride as well as ours if you didn’t take this matter up with the church board. She’s as old as I am; she probably would feel as keenly as I should about it. She didn’t want to take the petticoat; I made her do it. But she really needed it, Father, she truly needed it awfully. And she needs a great many other things just as badly. Don’t bring me anything the next time you go to the city, but let me come after school to-morrow and give me the clothing that will make Susanna comfortable. Will you, dear?”

When Mahala said, “Will you, dear?” there was not a thing on earth that Mahlon Spellman would not have undertaken to do for her, because it would have broken his heart to admit to her that there was anything on earth that he could not do for her if he chose.

“Certainly,” he said suavely. “Most certainly!”

That night, in the privacy of their bed chamber, Mahlon told Elizabeth that it was the easiest thing in the world to manage Mahala; when he had put the matter to her in the proper light, she had immediately offered to go and recover the petticoat, but he had felt that it was beneath their dignity to allow her to ask to be given back a gift. It might look as if they were in straitened circumstances, or as if they could not trust their daughter to do what was right and proper upon any given occasion. He told his wife, also, that he had arranged with Mahala to come to him after school the following day and he would secretly provide Susanna with comfortable clothing so that she night continue with her school work.

Elizabeth immediately fell upon his neck and kissed him. She told him that he was the most wonderful, the most generous of men. Mahlon expanded with her appreciation until he slept that night with a beatific smile illumining his face. He never felt more thoroughly that he had justified himself to himself and to Elizabeth than he did in the matter of Susanna and the Spellman petticoat, while he could trust the clerks in his store, through a few words he could drop, to let his townsmen know of his essential rightness and benevolence.

Because of many diverse ramifications in Mahala’s life similar to the petticoat affair, she always had been made to feel that she had the devoted love of every boy and girl in each advancing grade of her school work. Her teachers always depended upon her to tell them the truth concerning any occasion in the schoolroom otherwise inexplainable.

Mahala’s mother had told her that she might invite her particular friends for the celebration of her birthday, so Mahala was busy delivering the invitations. She was also extremely busy facing a very uncomfortable condition. There was no one in the room who was not her friend so far as she knew. There was no one to whom she had not been lovely and gracious. There was no one who did not think her beautiful, who was not proud to be seen in proximity to her. But Mahala very well understood that her father and mother would not want to entertain in their home the Susannas of the town and neither would they wish to entertain the Jasons. That, she knew, was an utter impossibility, and yet, in her heart, she distinctly rebelled.

Jason always had been the best scholar in any grade to which he had advanced but Mahala knew that she dared not ask him to be her guest. She watched his lean figure as he crossed the playground. He would go to the well, take a drink of water, stretch up his arms toward heaven as if he were imploring that the gift of equality with the other children should be dropped into his hands. He would cast a slow glance of longing at the boys playing ball and leap-frog, then he would reËnter the building, go to his desk and spend ten minutes on his next lesson, while the other pupils were playing.

She never had known him to practise an evasion. She never had known him, no matter how hard pressed, to do an unkind thing or to tell a lie. Sometimes, when unobserved she looked at him between narrowed lids, there came a feeling that, as he grew older and his lean frame filled out and became better clothed and his face took on maturity, he would be a pleasing figure physically. She dared not invite him to come to her party. Yet that imp of perversity that had always lived in the back of Mahala’s head and found dancing ground on the platform of her heart, possessed her strongly at that minute.

She managed to pass near him, while as she did so, she said in a low voice: “I am asking my friends to come to my birthday party this week and I wish that I might invite you.”

Jason stood very still; his eyes were on the ground. He dared not trust himself to look at the girl beside him. He was only a boy, but Marcia’s harsh tongue had taught him many things. He realized Mahala’s position instantly.

“Thank you,” he said in a voice as lifeless as if he were struggling with a contrary equation. “Of course, I couldn’t come, but it’s good of you to want me.”

Then he passed her and went up to the schoolroom. Taking out his books, he studied with a deeper concentration than he ever before had used. He had a new incentive.

Mahala drew a breath of relief. She had made Jason feel that she had thought of him, that if she could do as she liked, she would ask him to her party. Having cleared her conscience by placing the burden upon it on her parents where she knew it belonged, she turned her attention to the handsomest face and figure on the playground. She studied Junior Moreland carefully. Every year his father saw to it that he wore better and more expensive clothing. Every year made him increasingly handsome in face and figure; and yet, as Mahala studied him intently, she could see faint signs of coarseness creeping into his boyish face. The hollows beneath his eyes were too dark for a schoolboy. He carried himself with too great surety. His air was that of complete sophistication. What was there worth knowing that he did not know? Mahala resented the fact that Junior never approached her without the assumption that every one else should get out of his way. Day after day, as she watched him, the leader of every sport and amusement, she recalled how he often evaded the truth, how he twisted everything to his own advantage, how cruelly ruthless he was concerning their classmates who were in moderate or poor circumstances. He always tried to give the impression that she was his property, that none of the other girls and boys must pass a certain point in their intercourse with her.

There were times when her bright eyes watched him above the top of her Ancient History or Physical Geography and then turned to the background, where, hollow chested, hollow eyed, beaten and defeated, Jason sat rumpling his hair and plunging into his books. And sometimes, when he lifted his eyes and she met his glance, he gave her the feeling that he was a hungry dog that knew he had the strength to capture the bone, but from bitter experience, also knew that it was not worth while to make the fight, because superior power would intervene and take it away from him.

On the day of Mahala’s birthday party, in the midst of the bustle of cleaning, merely from force of habit, that which was clean, of decorating that which was already over-decorated, a dray stopped before the Spellman residence to deliver an expensive piano lamp, the attached card bearing birthday greetings from Martin Moreland, Jr., to Miss Mahala Spellman.

When Mahlon Spellman stepped into his parlour that night, the first thing that attracted his attention was this lamp. He went over and examined it critically; then he turned a face white with anger toward Elizabeth, who stood hesitant in the doorway. He was horrified at the extravagance of such a gift between children.

“Why did you allow this thing to be left here?” he demanded. “Why did you not return it immediately? You know that it is not suitable that a gift of such extravagance should be permitted between mere children. It must go back!”

“Yes, that is what I think,” said Elizabeth.

“Of course, that is what you think,” said Mr. Spellman. “That comes from being a sensible woman. There is nothing else you could think. I strenuously object to having Martin Moreland furnish my house for me. A piano lamp! A piano lamp! Why didn’t he get the piano and let me get the lamp?”

He leaned toward Elizabeth and thrust out his right hand as if he expected her to make an answer that would materialize so that he could pick it up and kick it through the door on the toe of his boot.

“Have you any idea,” he shouted, “what that thing cost?”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth quietly. “I heard Mahala say that she would like a piano lamp, so I looked at this same one yesterday, but I thought the price was out of all reason. They were asking thirty-five dollars for it.”

Mahlon arose to the height of the price. He paced the room, talking and gesticulating.

“I won’t have it!” he cried. “I won’t countenance it! Why, in order to keep even, the next time Junior has a birthday, I’ll be expected to help furnish Martin Moreland’s house. I am not in the furniture business.”

Mahlon arranged his cuffs and took a firm stand on widely spread feet; rocking thereon, he glared at his wife.

“Of course, dear,” she said soothingly, “it shall be exactly as you say. The Morelands are always obtrusive and vulgar; but I thought that perhaps, on account of your business relations with Mr. Moreland, he might be trying to express his appreciation of you, and your patronage of his bank, and your influence in helping him with other enterprises.”

Slowly Mahlon’s lower jaw dropped on its moorings. A look of astonishment crept into his eyes.

“You mean,” he said, “that you think the banker is using this opportunity to pay me a handsome compliment?”

“Why, it looks that way to me,” said Elizabeth. “It is the only feasible thing I could think of. There is no reason why the Morelands should spend such an appalling amount of money on Mahala. There must be some favour that Mr. Moreland wants of you, or some reason why he is anxious to keep your good will. You know, dear, that the one thing in all this world that Martin bitterly envies you is your popularity, the high regard in which you are held in this community. To make himself appreciated by his fellow citizens as they appreciate you, would please him far more than money.”

“Uh-huh,” said Mr. Spellman. “I see your point. I think, as usual, that you are quite right. I never complimented myself so highly as I did in the selection of a partner for life. Undoubtedly you have arrived at the correct solution. We shall be forced to keep the lamp; while the next time Junior Moreland has a birthday, we shall utilize the opportunity to show the Morelands something about proper giving.”

“Naturally!” said Elizabeth Spellman. “Naturally, you would want to do that. Now go and dress yourself in order that you may be ready to help me receive and entertain the children.”

There was a small spot of deep red glowing on each of Elizabeth Spellman’s cheek bones. She loved to give parties for Mahala or for herself and Mahlon, but she was compelled to admit that they were a strain. With her a party began, weeks before the actual day of entertainment, in general house cleaning, fresh laundering of curtains, fine dressing for beds and snowy table linens and napkins. Lavish and delicious refreshments must be prepared; clothing was a matter of immediate and intense concern.

For Mahala’s birthday each of them must have a new dress. No hands but those of Elizabeth were sufficiently dainty and painstaking to make them, so that weeks of hemming fine ruffles, of whipping on lace, of setting insertion, of placing bows and looping draperies were necessary. For this particular birthday Elizabeth had done an unprecedented thing. She had accidentally clothed her small daughter in a combination purely French. The gold of the girl’s hair was nearly the same shade as the tarlatan she had selected for her party dress. She had ruffled and trimmed it to the crest of the prevailing mode. She had combined with it little running wreaths of leaves that were exactly the blue of Mahala’s eyes, yet they turned to silver in oblique light rays. Finally, she had smashed on to it here and there, exactly as a French modiste would have done, big, soft bows of black velvet ribbon. A pair of black velvet shoes with the toes brightly embroidered with blue daisies, brought to Mahala by her father on his return from a recent trip to New York, had probably suggested the bows and had been saved for the party, while a wreath of the blue leaves had been kept to bind down the silky curls hanging free, so that Mahala, thus attired, was probably as beautiful a picture as could be made with a child of her age.

The night of her party she stood beside her father and mother, quite as composed, as much at ease, as they, till the last of her guests had arrived. She was watching her mother carefully as certain faces appeared in the doorway. When Mrs. Spellman’s lips narrowed and Mr. Spellman’s eyebrows arose, Mahala made a point of darting out of line and offering both hands. She doubled in warmth her welcome for every child that she knew would receive only half a welcome on the part of her father and mother. There was always a guilty feeling in her heart when she invited certain children she knew were not wanted, not welcome in her home. She realized that the day was going to come speedily when her mother would say: “You may invite so many guests and not one more.” On that uncomfortable day she would be forced to make a decision. The decision she would make would not be pleasing to her father and mother. To-night she thought fleetingly, merely realizing that there was a day of conflict coming.

On the arrival of the last guest, the games began. First they played “Who’s Got the Button?” Then they advanced to “London Bridge” and “Drop the Handkerchief.” All her guests thought it the proper thing to honour Mahala, and she had sped around the circle until she was weary. Mahala was given to precedents. She established one. She dropped the handkerchief behind Edith Williams. Glad of an excuse to get into the game, Edith snatched it up and ran. Junior saw and had a presentiment. Edith raced past him with intentions, but two things frustrated her. In her excitement her aim was poor and Junior cunningly side-stepped, dragging Sammy Davis with him. When the children shouted: “Junior, run!” Junior turned a deliberate head and refused to budge. All could see that the kerchief was behind Sammy. Sammy, delighted at the favour of the little rich girl, caught up the handkerchief and sped after Edith, only to find her in tears of rage and to get a well-aimed slap when he caught and tried to kiss her. The boys shouted, the girls “Oh-ed”—Mrs. Spellman raised her brows and cautioned behind an archly shaken finger: “Now! now! Little ladies! Re-mem-ber!” What all of the children always remembered was that Edith had chosen Junior and that he had evaded her. Someway her discomfort consoled the others. She was rich; she was Mahala’s best friend. She had lost her temper and been rude, and Mrs. Spellman had chided her. In their hearts most of them felt a little less unhappy than they had been; a trifle less constrained.

It is very probable that Mahala was the only child at her party who was completely happy. Every pleasure she ever had enjoyed in her life she had experienced under the watchful eyes of her father and mother. She was accustomed to their constant restrictions, their persistent precautions: “Be careful of your dress,” “Don’t shake out your curls,” “Don’t damage the furniture,” “Don’t touch the lace curtains.”

Her heart was so full of spontaneous enthusiasm, her body was so healthy, her brain was such a blessing, that all these millions of “don’ts” had left no mark upon her. Spontaneously as breathing, she answered: “Yes, Mama,” “I’ll be careful, Papa,” “Yes, thank you!”—and went straight ahead with her pleasure.

The other children followed her lead, but they were awkward, their movements were stilted and perfunctory. They were afraid of the lady of dainty precision whose quick eyes were following their every movement in the expectation that they would do some damage. They were afraid of the wealthy dry-goods merchant, who was so punctilious in his courtesies, so immaculate in his dress, so self-contained in his personality. To them, the party did not mean really to throw off restraint and to have a natural, healthful, childish evening; it meant to get through with whatever was to be done in such a creditable manner that they would not be subjected to constantly whispered admonitions of “don’t” and “be careful.”

With the handkerchief dropped behind Mahala and Junior Moreland speeding around the circle, the doorbell rang its shrill peal.

Mahlon looked inquiringly at Elizabeth; Elizabeth looked inquiringly at Mahala. Elizabeth’s hospitality had been strained to the utmost extent. Half a dozen children she had not expected were present. She had meant to be lavish, but she was worried in the back of her head for fear the ice cream and cake and pressed chicken would not hold out.

Mahala smiled reassuringly at her mother.

“It’s some one to see Papa on business,” she said. “Every one I invited is here.”

Mahlon immediately remembered all the offices that he was accustomed to perform when he was destined to become, for an instant, the impelling object in the retina of one of his fellow men. The ceremony began with his hair, over which he ran his hands; it proceeded to his tie, which he felt to learn if it had the proper set; and slid down his vest ending with a little jerk at the points; then each hand busied itself with the cuff encircling the other wrist; while his eyes travelled rapidly over his sleeves, down his trouser legs, to the toes of his boots, which might well have reflected his entire person had there been proper lighting. Then Mr. Spellman, conceiving that the Morelands might have called to see how their lamp appeared beside his piano, with Napoleonic air, advanced to his front door, throwing it wide open. His wife forgot herself sufficiently to follow the few steps that would give her anxiety the easement of an unobstructed view. Mahala, quaking in her small heart for fear she had asked some one more, so that the ring might presage another unwelcome Susanna, followed frankly.

From his elevation, Mr. Spellman saw the catalpa trees and the evergreens decorating the front yard on a level with his eyes. It was with an inarticulate cry of delight that Mahala darted past him to pick up a little gold cage on a perch of which a bird as yellow as sunshine burst into song when the light from the doorway streamed on him, giving the impression of sunrise. Holding the cage outstretched in both hands, Mahala advanced to her mother. The bird trilled and warbled exquisitely. The child was entranced.

“Read the card, Mother! See if it is for me,” she cried excitedly.

The card read, “To Mahala on her birthday, from a friend.”

Elizabeth stared at Mahala; Mahlon stared at Mahala, and then at Elizabeth, and again at Mahala. Mahala wrapped her arms around the cage and laid her head against it and danced a lively waltz around the room crooning: “Oh, you lovely little gold bird! You lovely little gold bird! You are mine! You are mine! Oh, I never had anything half so wonderful!”

She set the cage upon the piano, stretched her arms around it, laid her face against it, and looked up at her mother, her big, wide-open eyes demanding love, sympathy, comprehension.

Elizabeth Spellman’s face was a study; but Mahlon’s was a problem. He opened his lips, but his daughter forestalled him.

“I just know that this lovely surprise is from you, Papa,” she said. “Nobody ever can think of the wonderful things that you do.”

Then she stopped, because she realized that her father’s face was blank, even forbidding. The gift was not from him. She turned to her mother, her lips still parted, and met a duplicate of her father’s expression. Then her eyes ran around the room in quick question to which there was not even the hint of an answer. And then, in her bewilderment and with the swiftness of thought, for one instant her face turned full to the window beside the piano which opened on the side lawn, while her sharp eyes thought they saw a fleeting glimpse of a face among the branches of a tree. Deliberately, she placed a hand on each side of the cage and again laid her face against the wires as near to the little gold bird as possible. Then she smiled a smile that would have been very becoming to any conceivable kind of angel, and her lips began chanting happily: “Oh, you darling little bird! I love you. You are the most beautiful gift I ever have had in my whole life.”

Junior Moreland began to sulk from the instant Mahala appeared with the bird. Every one of her guests had brought her a gift, some of them expensive and attractive, some of them clumsily made kerchiefs and pincushions. To all of them she had given warm welcome and appreciation; but all of them put together had not equalled the magnificence of Junior’s lamp at which the other girls had looked enviously, and which the other boys had hated cordially. Now, out of the night, there had come a bird of gold and Mahala had said that it was the most beautiful gift she ever had received.

All his life Junior had considered himself first. He was considering himself now. He felt abused and defrauded. He sneered openly. He said to Mrs. Spellman: “Are you going to let her keep such a dirty, messy thing as a bird in this elegant house?”

Mrs. Spellman hesitated. She was repeating “elegant” in her heart. As words go, she thought it the most wonderful she had ever heard from a young person. It was the joy of her life to be a perfect wife to Mahlon, to be a perfect pattern to her neighbours, but every year of her life made her task more difficult. The most difficult thing of all was the third task, which tried her more than either of the others—to be a perfect mother to Mahala, Pride might soar to undue heights where it concerned her husband or prestige; but the love of her small daughter cut to the very depths of her heart. Mahala was delighted over the bird. That was easy to be seen. But Junior Moreland was the son of the rich banker. He was a handsome lad. He always had been devoted to Mahala, and while there were things about him of which Mrs. Spellman did not approve, she had the feeling that under her influence, in combination with life with Mahala, Junior might develop into a man greatly to be desired. How very seldom did it happen that such a face and figure as his were combined with great wealth. Junior was an only child. If the sinister kind of power that made his father the figure he was in the little town, extended to the boy, Junior also would have great power—the power of riches—and how clever he was in the selection of the right word!

Mrs. Spellman smiled at the lad. He was the son of the rich banker.

“You know,” she said evenly, “I’ve no idea who has sent this little bird to Mahala. There are several women in the town who raise canaries for sale. It’s an inexpensive gift. Maybe it comes from some one Mahala has helped. She is always trying to do kind things to people, as is very proper that a girl in her position should. Perhaps, by morning, we shall be able to think who sent the birdie, and then we shall decide what to do about it.”