"Yes, I'm sure you could."
"I can't do much; and I only have two friends besides the club that I want to have. I want to pay for all the coffee and cake, that I may feel that it's my party. Just my two daughters, and my two friends, and my grandchildren—four, that's all. I've been saving the money for a year."
One night early in the next week the bell rang. A working man stood at the door. He handed a five-dollar bill to one of the Residents, saying: "My wife, she's goin' to have a party here Thursday. I want you to give her a good time. She's been a good wife to me. Don't tell her; just spend it for her;" and the man disappeared in the darkness.
It was decided to order a birthday cake and light sixty candles.
The day came. Every member brought a remembrance. Radiantly, tearfully happy stood the hostess. She loved music, and a sweet, gracious woman whose music wins the most cultured sang song after song. Time for refreshments came. In the front parlor a club of little girls were sewing. It seemed a pity that they should not see the cake and the candles lighted. They were told that the doors would open, a lady was having her first birthday party, and it would be kind to wish her many returns of the day.
The cake was brought in with the sixty candles burning, and placed before the hostess, a gift from her husband. "I didn't know," the wife kept whispering under her breath as she stood beside it at the table. The doors rolled slowly backward, and twenty children breathed "Ah!" Then in a piping chorus, "Wish you many returns of the day." A moment the woman stood still. Then turning a shining face on all about, she moved toward the children, the tears falling fast. Raising her hands and face heavenward, she said solemnly: "O God, what have I done that you should be so good to me?" The volume of her life was opened.
A cake with a few shining candles, a few friends with their little offerings, and the wishes of a few children, and to one woman God had reached out of His high heaven and selected her as the special object of His care and love.
Not all of the five dollars had been used. The hostess was asked what she wanted done with it. She was radiant. "I'll give a party to those children what said that sweet thing to me." Suggestions of other uses were cast aside. The children must have a party—ice cream and cake. When she found out that cake and ice cream would cost more than the money in hand, she announced: "I will wait to give it. In a month I save money to put to it." She made all her own arrangements, and proved a hostess of resource and tact.
She received her guests most cordially. Perhaps the most wildly exciting hours of her life were when, after much coaxing, she joined in the games of Drop the Handkerchief, Blind Man's Buff and Going to Jerusalem, the last game sending her crimson and panting into a chair in the corner, with the children crowding about her shrieking with laughter.
Time for refreshments found her anxious and watchful. The members of the club had fallen into the spirit of the day, and nobody was grown up.