"They are for you," she said.
Little Agnes took the parcel, but not in her usual frank, enthusiastic, and open delight, but timidly.
"They're not—they're not toads?" she said.
"Toads!" cried Irene; and then she colored crimson. "Don't take them unless you want them," she said; and she snatched the parcel away from the child.
Little Agnes burst out crying.
"Irene, what do you mean?—Surely, Agnes, you are not silly!" exclaimed Rosamund. "See, let me open the parcel."
"I don't want her to have it unless she really wishes for it," said Irene. "I wouldn't force my gifts on any one, not even little Agnes." But there was an imploring note in her voice.
Little Agnes, however, was still full of the horrors with which she had been crammed. Rosamund went on one knee and opened the ungainly parcel. It contained a Noah's Ark, a box of bricks, some soldiers (the very best of their kind), and other toys of the sort that would ravish children. At another moment little Agnes would have been all delight, but now she seemed to see—behind the marching soldiers, and the fascinating bricks which could raise such marvelous architectural edifices, and the Noah's Ark with its quaint animals—toads and lizards and newts, and wasps and bees. Oh, why was she so frightened, she who had never really been frightened before? And she did love Irene. She looked up into her face now with piteous terror, and yet a piteous love mingling in her eyes.
"I will take them; they are beautiful," she said; and she clasped them in her arms. Then she put her face up for Irene to kiss, and then she went away staggering under the weight of her new treasures.
Irene turned to Rosamund.