“‘Bless his little heart!’ said Cassiopeia. ‘I wish we could keep his birthday, but nobody knows when it is.’
“‘But we love him just the same!’ said Andromeda, rubbing his fur the wrong way and ending with a little shake of his nose—and the sparks flew as if he were a garden of meteors himself. And that was really the end of the party.”
The Kitten had something in her mind to do at once when she was perfectly sure the party was over. For that very minute when the Princess came to the end and Pat and Miss Phyllisy began to talk about it, she slipped her foot out from under her to have it ready to walk on. And the next minute, when Phyllisy looked around to see why the child wasn’t talking too, when it was rather especially her story, she was already starting away—and she didn’t care to tell what for.
Because they wondered, and they knew she wouldn’t mind—it was only that she didn’t like to explain—they followed after. When she was clear away, the Kitten began to run, so when they came to the place in the garden where the balsams grew all in a row, she was there and had found a ripe one.
There were very few flowers left, and a great many seedpods, and when they pinched them at the tip—or only barely touched them—they popped delightfully, but there didn’t any star shoot out.
But they pretended there did; and—as Miss Phyllisy remarked—you couldn’t see actual fireworks if you set them off with the sun shining like that.
IX
A SURPRISE PARTY
It seemed to the Others that the Princess was a long time coming. And once they had been afraid they wouldn’t be ready in time. But they were—too soon, and it was the watching that made it seem so long. They flew when they saw her, and hurried her along.
“It’s something to surprise you,” said Miss Phyllisy.