To Our Darling Adele Doring
from
Her Sunny Six.
“I just knew it!” cried their happy hostess, “and I do wish that I had arms long enough to hug you all at once.”
“Adele!” exclaimed Betty Burd. “Don’t make such a terrible wish. An old witch might be lurking around and it might come true.”
“Well, I hope not,” laughed Adele, “for my beauty would surely be spoiled if my arms dragged on the floor.”
Jack and Bob carried the pretty blue books into the library and placed them on the center-table, and then the merry fun was renewed, when suddenly the side-door bell clanged and Adele skipped to open it, but there was no one outside.
“Some one is playing a prank, I guess,” she laughingly said. But Jack suggested that they turn on the porch light, and when this was done Adele saw a low bird’s-eye-maple table on which stood a beautiful drooping fern. When the boys had carried it into the library Adele gleefully clapped her hands as she exclaimed, “It’s just what I need for the bay-window in my room.”
The little card which hung on the fern informed her that this was a gift from her brother Jack and his six boy friends, who called themselves the Jolly Pirates. Adele thanked them with shining eyes.
“Now,” she said, “surely the surprises are over,” but just that very moment Mrs. Doring called from the top of the stairs, “Adele, come up here a moment and bring the girls with you.” And so up the stairs they flocked, looking for all the world like a bevy of butterflies in their pretty muslin dresses and their many-colored sashes.