Dixie turned, smiling radiantly. “Oh,” she laughed, “I was ’magining ahead, I guess. I was wondering what lovely things would happen to Carol in this pretty blue silk dress.” Then, a little anxiously, she added, “There’d ought to be a party, shouldn’t you think, Miss Bayley?”
“Of course there should be a party, and, what is more, there shall be one, too. When is Carol to have a birthday?”
“November sixth, and that comes on Saturday,” the little girl replied. “I was meaning to make a cake, and there’d ought to be one more candle. Grandma Piggins gave Carol eight little candles last year, but now we need nine.”
Miss Bayley was again treading the machine and making it hum. Then, when she paused to adjust the ruffler, she glanced up brightly to find that the gold-brown eyes were still watching, apparently waiting. “We’ll have that party, dear,” the girl-teacher declared, “and the one more candle, I’ll promise that, but I’m going to keep it for a surprise for all of you little Martins.”
“Oh, Miss Bayley,” said the small girl, clapping her hands gleefully, “won’t that be the nicest? It’ll be a ’sprise for Baby Jim and for Ken and me, too, as well as for Carol.”
Teacher nodded, though at that particular moment she had not the vaguest idea what the surprise-party was to be. Then she added “When is your birthday, Dixie, dear?”
“Mine? Oh, I came in February, on the snowiest, coldest, blustriest day, dad said. Brother Ken was born in April, but Baby Jim,” the girl’s voice softened to a tone of infinite tenderness when she spoke that name, “our little treasure-baby was born on Christmas day.” Then she added with that far-away expression which was so often in her eyes, “Grandmother Piggins said when little souls are sent to our earth on Christ’s birthday, they have been specially chosen to be His disciples.”
“It may be true, dear.” Miss Bayley had thought so little of these things. She had been brought up in boarding-schools without loved ones to guide. Then she added, as she adjusted a long, straight piece of blue silk that was soon to be a ruffle. “Of one thing I am sure, and that is that the influence of a beautiful life lives here on earth long after the form of the loved one has passed from our sight. Grandmother Piggins must have been a dear, dear old lady.”
“She was,” the child said simply. “Everybody loved her.”
“What epitaph could one more desire?” was what the girl-teacher thought. Then the machine began to hum, and Dixie bent over to watch the spindle fly, and to see the strip of silk that was straight on one side come out in the prettiest ruffle on the other.