“Your birthday cake, Mollie! Wish! Wish for something splendid. Then try to blow all the candles out with one breath, like this,” and Berry puffed out her cheeks and blew so strongly that the little flames wavered. “If all the candle flames go out your wish will come true before your next birthday,” Berry concluded earnestly.
Mollie promptly obeyed Berry’s directions, with such good success that every tiny flame was extinguished.
“Goody! Goody! But you mustn’t tell your wish until next birthday,” cautioned Berry, running around the table and carefully removing the candles from the cake. They were the same candles that had been used on Berry’s own cake on her eleventh birthday in October, and they were now carefully put away. For who could tell when it would again be possible to purchase wax candles?
Then Mrs. Arnold helped Mollie cut the cake, and at the first taste Mollie smiled more radiantly than ever, but quickly put the piece back on her plate.
“Don’t you like it, Mollie?” Berry asked anxiously.
“It’s beautiful!” Mollie replied soberly; “but I’m goin’ ter take it home ter Ma. May I?” she added, a little doubtfully.
“The whole cake is yours, Mollie dear. But you must eat the first piece yourself,” Mrs. Arnold said quickly; “you are to take the remainder home.”
Mollie drew a long breath. “I reckon my Ma never tasted a birthday cake,” she said soberly.
After dinner was over and Mollie had seen Mrs. Arnold put the cake carefully into a small basket, which she told the little girl she was to carry home, Berry and Mollie went back to the sitting-room; and Berry brought out her own two fine dolls, which had heads of china with black curls painted on them, and were dressed in white muslin and wore sashes of blue silk. Berry had brought these dolls from Vermont, and one was named Josephine Maria, for Berry’s Grandmother Arnold, who had given the dolls to Berry, and the other was called Maria Josephine. “Then, you see, neither one can be the favorite,” Berry explained, as she set the dolls side by side in her father’s big chair. “Now let’s play it’s a real party; my dolls and your doll can be ‘real’ girls, and we’ll talk for them,” she continued.
Mollie nodded with smiling delight, and for an hour or more the two little friends and their dolls played happily. But as the clock struck three Mollie announced that she must start for home.