“Here’s the wood to cook the boy’s birthday supper, Wanza. Come and give me a hug, Joey. I think you’re old enough to have a few nickels to spend, boy,—put your hand in my pocket, the pocket where we keep our jack-knife. There! What do you find?”
“A dollar,” shrieked Joey with bulging eyes.
“It’s yours,” I said.
His eyes opened wide, gazed incredulously into mine; his face grew white; and then tears gushed forth. “And I thought—I thought you’d forgot my birthday,” he sobbed.
Wanza’s nose was pink when I turned to hold the oven door open for her. But her eyes were friendly, and her full, exquisite lips were smiling.
“It’s going to be a perfectly grand cake,” she breathed.
Joey had run whooping out of doors to bathe his face in the spring. Emboldened by the girl’s smile I touched her smooth round cheek lightly.
“There’s a tear here still, Wanza,” I teased, though my voice was somewhat husky. “You’re April’s lady—sunshine and shadow—tears and laughter; but you’re a good girl, Wanza, a fine staunch friend to Joey and me. Don’t hold my thoughtlessness of to-day against me, please.”
She dashed the drop away. Her cornflower blue eyes blazed suddenly into mine.
“I ’most hated you a little while ago, Mr. David Dale, when I knew why you’d forgotten poor Joey’s birthday—” she hesitated, then repeated defiantly, “when I knew why you’d forgotten.”