Chapter Eighteen.
Shireen’s Birthday.—Stamboul’s Life and Career.
Shireen’s birthday party at the Castle was going to be a very grand affair, so Tommy and Lizzie would have told you, for they had made great preparations for celebrating the event.
Shireen had reached the advanced age of one-and-twenty, and yet there was but little sign that her strength was actually failing her. She did not care to move about quite so much as she had done many years before, and preferred, as we have seen, to take her little rambles about the village, and visit her many friends there.
She preferred, too, the lawn to the forest on a sunny summer’s afternoon, or a seat by the low fire among her old friends, when the wintry winds were roaring around the chimneys, and shaking doors and windows.
But to look at Shireen, with her lovely coat, her sweet face, her wee, short ears, and blue eyes, you would not have said she was more than seven.
“I wonder,” said Lizzie, on the morning of Shireen’s birthday, “if Mrs Cooper will come, and bring her lovely prize cat Stamboul?”
“Oh, yes, she is sure to come,” was the reply. “I’ve just had a letter.”
So away ran Lizzie and Tom to complete the arrangements for the afternoon and evening entertainment, for the great coup de théâtre was to consist of lighting up the grounds after dark with coloured lamps, and the flowerbeds and borders with fairy lights, and this duty devolved upon Lizzie and her little brother.