She held the edge of the quilt in her hand. Was it slipping once more? Yes, it was most undoubtedly being pulled from her grasp, and, as her hair nearly stood on end with fear, she heard an unmistakable sneeze from somewhere just underneath her bed. She gave a little agonized gasp of terror, and at the same moment something sprang up and plumped on to her chest. Nearly dead with fright, she yet managed to look, and to her astonishment beheld only the waving tail and round green eyes of Toby, the school cat, which, settling himself comfortably, began to claw the quilt with his paws, purring his loudest the while as if quite proud and pleased with himself. Sylvia sat up in bed and laughed heartily at her burglar.
"Toby, you wretch," she cried, stroking his soft fur, "how did you manage to get in here? I suppose it was you that was trying to tug my quilt from me. No doubt you wanted to make yourself a nice bed on the floor. And then you sneezed! What shall I do with you? I can't take you to the kitchen in the middle of the night. You'll have to cuddle down with me; you're beautifully warm at any rate. Here, come inside, you'll be as good as a hot bottle." And, clasping the purring cat close in her arms, she was soon back in the land of dreams.
It was quite a little adventure to relate to Linda next morning, and the latter wondered how she had been able to sleep so stolidly through it.
"You always say I shouldn't hear either a burglar or an earthquake," she declared, "and Toby was very nearly as bad. You naughty, precious puss! What do you mean by coming and scaring my Sylvia? There, you didn't do it on purpose, did you? Come into my bed for a minute before I get up. You're the sweetest, softest darling that ever was."
Sylvia's birthday was on the nineteenth of November, and to her great delight it happened this year on a Saturday. Miss Kaye, who tried to make school seem as much like home as possible, was indulgent regarding such anniversaries, and permitted many small privileges to the fortunate owner of a birthday. Sylvia was allowed to choose the dinner, an important decision, over which she lingered so long that the mistress nearly lost patience.
"Of course you must not order turkey and ice cream," said Miss Kaye; "it must be two of our ordinary dishes, only you may have which you like. Be quick, for Cook is waiting to know."
After some hesitation Sylvia decided on hotpot and fig pudding.
"I like the potatoes on the top of the hotpot," she explained to Linda, "especially when they're crisp and brown, and the fig pudding always has delicious sweet sauce, and Miss Kaye lets one take plenty of sugar with it. Jessie Ellis chose boiled mutton and corn-flour blancmange with jam on her birthday. I don't think that was nice at all."
The girls in her class subscribed, and gave Sylvia a birthday book as their joint present, containing poetical quotations from Shakespeare for each day, and one or two pretty illustrations of Perdita, Portia, and other heroines. She was charmed with such a remembrance and asked them all to write their names in it.
"We chose a fawn cover," said Nina, "because topaz is the birthday stone for November. Marian wanted a green one, but I said that wouldn't do. It's a funny thing, but people always say your month stone matches your eyes. I never can quite decide whether yours are brown or dark grey, but I'm sure a necklace of topaz would suit you beautifully, and you'll have to wear one when you're grown up. By the by, on which day of the week were you born?"