“There’s only one sensible thing in the whole lot,” announced Jo holding up a pink pincushion bearing the words: “Many happy returns” done with pins. This had been Jean’s patient task and she was highly pleased when Jo said: “If there’s one thing I never have when I want it, that thing is a pin.”
Then came the supper, a special feast set out on the big table.
“What a wonderful cake!” remarked Jo, viewing a large iced affair in the centre.
“It had to be big for a double birthday,” Jean said. “I hope it is as good as it looks.”
“Oh, it is bound to be,” returned Jo with cheerful optimism.
“You must cut it,” said Dr. Paul, when the time came, and he handed her a knife.
With a great flourish Jo lifted her knife and brought it down on the iced surface. It did not penetrate an inch. She pressed on harder; still dense resistance. “This is the hardest icing I ever saw,” she remarked. Then she began scraping away the icing, beginning to suspect a joke which she discovered in the large tin pan underneath, which had been simply turned upside down and iced over.
“Now who is the perpetrator of that?” inquired one and another, but not one could, or would, tell, so to this day it remains a mystery. Though if one could have seen ’Lish and Hetty looking in the window, stuffing their handkerchiefs in their mouths to stifle their chuckles as they tried to catch a glimpse of Miss Lloyd’s impassive face, it might have been suspected that the joke originated in the kitchen. However it made for much laughter and there was a real birthday cake, if a smaller one. In this was found a ring, a thimble and a coin. To Daniella fell the ring, to Mary Lee the thimble while Mr. Wells secured the coin.
The straw ride had been postponed until the next evening as it was seen that there would not be time for this and a dance, too, if they were to linger at all over the supper.
“If there is anything I hate to do it is to hurry away from a good feast,” Jean had remarked when the programme was being arranged.