"Did you get the candles, Cora?" Mother asked.
"Why, no!" the little girl answered. "I—I thought we had candles!"
"And I thought I told you to get them," Mother went on. "There isn't one in the house! I've looked everywhere. Never mind, perhaps I can borrow some next door. Go back to your friends."
"Oh, I do hope you can get candles!" sighed Cora Janet. "A birthday cake without candles will hardly be right!"
Mother asked the lady who lived next door, on one side, if she had any candles.
"Not a one, I'm sorry to say," was the answer.
Then Mother asked the lady on the other side.
"Oh, I never use candles," this lady replied, coming out on her back stoop to talk over the fence to Cora Janet's mother. "I'm so sorry!"
"Well, I guess they'll have to eat the cake without any birthday candles on," said Mother. "Cora Janet will be so disappointed, too, as she is such an imaginative child! Just fancy, Mrs. Blake, she came home yesterday, and told about helping out of a trap an old rabbit gentleman, with a tall silk hat!"
"The idea! She must have dreamed it!" said Mrs. Blake.