“A real queen!” cried Philomène, “as real as Marie Antoinette, or Mary, Queen of Scots?”
“Quite as real,” replied Miss Mills, laughing, “and now you must look at the beautiful pincushion that Nurse has made for you. Won’t it look nice on your dressing-table?”
“Yes, and I will put the date of my birthday on it in pins,” said Philomène, but Nurse shook her head.
“I wouldn’t put pins into it, Miss, if I were you,” she said, reproachfully, “that would spoil it;” and Philomène with her arms about the old woman promised, “I won’t, Nursie dear, indeed I never will.”
The morning of the birthday was blissfully spent in the making of toffee, a rather hot occupation for June, no doubt, but Philomène’s wishes were law throughout that day. It did not turn out to be nice toffee when made, but it was not wasted, for Lilian Augusta used it to light the kitchen fire, and said it was as good as any patent fire-lighter. At dinner Philomène was allowed to carve the chicken herself, though her carving proved as unsuccessful as her cookery. “But as it’s my birthday I can have the liver!” she announced, triumphantly, “and I do know where to find that—it is somewhere under its arms.”
All that afternoon Philomène sat sketching busily or reading in her new story-book, nor did she forget before putting it away to make a note both of its title, and of the names of its author and publisher, in a little red leather pocket-book kept for that purpose. This custom had been introduced by Godmother.
“If you are at all like me,” Isolde had said, “you will be very sorry as you grow older to find that some of the dearest books of your childhood have been thrown away, or given away, with or without your knowledge. Your wise elders will say, ‘She is getting too old now ever to want to read this or that again,’ and they will forget that just now you may be neither young enough or old enough for the book, but that in a few more years you will begin to grow younger again and want to read it, and then it will be too late to recover it. You will remember the exact colour of the binding, and how your favourite story in it began half way down on the right hand page, but you will not remember who wrote it or who printed it. Perhaps you will not even remember the name of the book, and if you want it back again, you cannot very well write to a shop and say, ‘Dear Sirs, please send me a thin green book with a picture of a lizard as the frontispiece, and the last story but one is the nicest of all. Yours faithfully—’ So here is a little pocket-book, and I want you to make a note of the titles of all the books you are fond of, with the names of their authors and publishers, and even if you find it a bother now and then to remember to write them down, I think you will be glad of it later on.”
Just as Philomène was going to bed, a letter from Godmother arrived.
“My own little cushat,” wrote Isolde, “I am afraid you will have to wait a little while before you can have your birthday present, for it is a trap and a white donkey, and though you had better leave them at the Cushats as parlour boarders when you are in London, they are to be your very own all the same. I want you to come and stay with me, my little bird, for July and August and part of September. You and I will get on very well together in the summer, I hope, and take out the new white Neddie for lots of drives. We shall have a great deal to tell each other when we meet, but I have no time for more now. Goodbye, my bairnie. Love and all good wishes from Godmother.”
It was when Philomène looked out of her bedroom window on the morning of the day following her birthday, that she noticed a large fairy ring on the lawn, and felt very much flattered, for by it she knew that the fairies had not forgotten the occasion, but had given a ball in her honour.