There were two rules at the Camp about birthdays. One was that there should never be any “boughten” presents. The second rule was that the hero or heroine of the occasion should do exactly as he pleased all day, and that everyone should fall into his or her plans.
There was a curious collection of gifts at Tante’s place when she came down to breakfast. By her plate was a bowl of luscious strawberries—the last of the season, which the Twins had found by very careful hunting over acres of meadow the day before. They knew how much their mother loved the wild strawberries, and how lonesome she was going to be without them for a whole year. “Well, this will make the year a little shorter, won’t it, Mummy?” said Freddie. “Only from July till June.”
“Some day we are going to take Mummy all up and down the world, wherever the strawberries grow,” said Eddie. “Hugh says we could begin in the winter in the far south and chase them right up to the Arctic circle, where they might still be juicy in September! Wouldn’t that be fine?”
“But they would never be so good anywhere as these are, I’m sure,” said Tante.
Norma had picked a beautiful bunch of flowers for Tante—little wild orchises and ferns and cotton grass, which she had arranged in an original jardinière made of a tin can covered with birch bark. Cicely had strung a beautiful necklace of hemlock cones with the red beads of the bunchberry set between. Beverly had finished at last the basket which Sal Seguin had helped her begin. Indeed, Beverly had seen the old Indian woman twice since that first visit. Once she had met her by chance on the shore near the bathing beach, and had brought down the half-finished basket for advice. Once again old Sal had looked her up in Camp, with a present of dyed red grass. So Tante’s basket had a beautiful border to finish it.
Nancy had written her mother a birthday poem, and Hugh had whittled her a weather-vane—a round robin painted red, to go on the flag pole in front of the Camp. Anne gave her the prettiest pebble she had found—lovely mottled green with a white circle round it, which made it a “lucky stone.” Victor had painted her a little sketch.
As for Dick, that ingenious boy had made a wind-harp by stringing the frame of a wooden box with twisted silk thread. And when Tante put it under the half-opened window in a strong breeze, it made the most odd and beautiful sounds, like fairy music written in no human key.
“Nobody ever had such interesting presents!” declared Tante, when she had looked at them all.
“Mine you cannot see till ze evening,” said Gilda with a sly nod. Tante knew quite well that Gilda had been making candy all the previous afternoon; and Gilda knew that she knew. But it was a secret all the same.
“Now, what do you want to do, Mother?” asked Hugh, following the second camp rule. “We are your slaves to-day. Choose what you would like best”