CONCLUSION.
“
What shall we do to celebrate your birthday, my child?” asked Grandmother Kitty, early in that first week of October on whose Saturday the young girl would reach to the dignity of sixteen years. “All the conditions of your life are so different from mine at your age: seeming to make you both older and younger—if you understand what I mean—that I would like to hear your own wishes.”
“They shall be yours, Grandma dearest. You always have such happy ideas. I’d like yours best.”
“No, indeed! Not this time. I want everything to be exactly as you like this year; especially since you are now to assume the main charge of some of our charities.”
“I feel so unfitted for the responsibility you are giving me, Sun Maid. I’m afraid I shall make many blunders.”
“Doesn’t everybody? And isn’t it by seeing wherein we blunder and avoiding the pitfall a second time that we learn to walk surely and swiftly? You have been well trained to know the value of the money which God has given you so plentifully and of that loving sympathy which is better and richer than the wealth. I am not afraid for you, though it is an excellent sign that you are afraid for yourself. Now a truce to sermons. Let’s hear the birthday wish. I am getting an old lady and don’t like to be kept waiting.”
“Sunny Maid! you are not old, nor ever will be!”
“Not in my heart, darling. How can I feel so when there is so much in life to do and enjoy? I have to bring myself up short quite often and remind myself how many birthdays of my own have gone by; though it seems but yesterday that Gaspar and I were standing by the Snake-Who-Leaps and learning how to hold our bows that we might shoot skilfully, even though riding bareback and at full speed, yet——”
“I believe that you could do the very same still; and that there isn’t another old lady——”