"I am afraid you won't care for mine very much," said Angela meekly. "It is something for your room." But Poppy was equally delighted with the little blue pincushion, with her name, 'Poppy,' outlined in bright new pins. "It is stuffed with tiny, soft, beautiful feathers from our own hens," explained Angela. "I've been saving them, and Anna baked them for me."
They all agreed that it was a perfectly lovely birthday morning, one of the nicest they had ever known, and when the presents had been examined and discussed, Anna's pretty writing-paper came in for a long examination.
"I like mine best," said Esther, and all agreed they each preferred their own.
"Mine ought to have had poppies on it," said their little namesake; "but I do like roses best."
"Anna gave you the roses because the rose is the queen of flowers, and you are the queen of the day, I expect."
Then Anna came in to call them, and at the sight of the four figures in the bed immediately collapsed on to a seat by the door, and laughed and laughed until they laughed too from the infection of it.
"We'd best stop ourselves," she said presently, rising, and trying to make her face very grave. "Laugh before breakfast, cry before night, they do say; and we don't want no tears this day, do we?"
"Oh no," they all agreed, and tried very hard to draw long serious faces at once; but it was difficult on a birthday, and holiday, with the sun shining, and the birds singing, and tea in the kitchen in prospect.
When Poppy presently danced singing down to breakfast, she found by her plate another present—a pretty scarlet housewife from Cousin Charlotte, containing a little pair of scissors, a silver thimble, a case of needles, a stiletto, a bodkin, and two of the tiniest reels of silk she had ever seen. When the case was closed it looked like a dear little red hand-bag.
There was a letter, too, from Canada from father, for the mail happened to come in that very day. Such a nice letter it was—so full of love for his little daughter, and longing to see her, and all of them. "Sometimes I feel I cannot bear this exile from my little ones any longer," he wrote. "If I do run away from here and return, will you help to make a home for your old father and mother? or will you want to remain with Cousin Charlotte always? Give her my love and grateful thanks for all her kindness to my chicks."