Mary’s birthday came, and with it a day of burning, glowing colour. The first early autumn mists were hanging like veils of thinly-sheeted bronze before the grass wet with heavy dew, the sky of azure, the sea crystal pale. In the mist the rectory was a giant box of pearl. The air smelt of distant fires.

On such a day who would not be happy? And Mary was perhaps the happiest little girl in the kingdom. Happy as she was she lost much of her plainness, her eyes sparkling behind her glasses, her mouth smiling. Something tender and poignant in her, some distant prophecy of her maturity, one day beautifully to be fulfilled, coming forth in her, because she felt that she was beloved even though it were only for an hour. She was lucky in her presents; her mother gave her a silver watch, a little darling, quite small, with the hours marked in blue on the face, and her father gave her a silver watch chain so thin that you thought that it would break if you looked at it, and in reality so strong that not the strongest man in the world could break it. Aunt Amy gave her a muff, soft and furry, and Helen gave her a red leather blotter, and Uncle Samuel sent her a book, the very “Dynevon Terrace” that she wanted—how did he know? And Miss Jones gave her a work basket with the prettiest silk lining inside you ever saw, and a pair of gloves from Barbara and—a glass bottle with a silver stopper from Jeremy!

It seemed that she liked this last present best of all. She rushed up to Jeremy and kissed him in the wettest possible way.

“Oh, Jeremy! I am so glad. That’s just what I wanted! I’ve never seen such a darling. I’ve never had any silver things to stand on my table and Gladys Sampson has such a lot, and this is prettier than any that Gladys has. Oh! mother, do look! See what Jeremy’s given me! Father, see what Jeremy’s given me! Isn’t it pretty, Miss Jones? You are a dear, Jeremy, and I’ll have it all my life!”

Jeremy stood there, his heart like lead. It may be said with truth of him that never in his whole existence had he felt such shame as he did now. Mean, mean, mean! Suddenly, now that it was too late, he hated that book upstairs lying safely in his bottom drawer. He didn’t want ever to look at it again.

And Mary. She must know that this was his old glass bottle that he had had so long. She had seen it a hundred times. It is true that he had rubbed it up and got the woman in the kitchen to polish the silver, but still she must know. He looked at her with new interest. Was it all acting, this enthusiasm? No, it was not. She was genuinely moved and delighted. Was she pretending to herself that she had never seen it before, forcing herself to believe that it was new? He would keep the book and give it to her at Christmas. But that would not be the same thing. The deed was done now. The shabby, miserable deed.

He did everything that he could to make her birthday a happy one. He was with her all the day. He allowed her to read to him a long piece of the story that she was then writing, a very tiresome business because she could not read her own script, and because there were so many characters that he could never keep track of any of them. He went blackberrying with her in the afternoon and gave her all the best blackberries. But nothing could raise his spirits. The beautiful day said nothing to him. He felt sick in the evening from eating too many blackberries and went to bed directly after supper.