Serena turned and hugged Ralph frantically. "Oh, you dear, dear, darling big boy!" she cried, to everybody's amusement. "I love you and I love you! I never won a prize in all my life, and I'm six. I'm going to give half of it to you!"
There were not many more to try their skill after Serena, and the interest in the game flagged a little with the certainty that the best possible blow had been struck. Serena had won the first prize, Robert Gaston the second, with a mark to his credit on a short lower limb, near the test mark on the trunk of the tree.
The consolation prize had to be drawn for by five, Mrs. Charleford and Ralph among them. Mrs. Charleford won it, a little Japanese hen standing on a card bearing the inscription "A hatch it you may count on."
Serena was given a candy box in the shape of a tree trunk, tied with red, white and blue ribbon, finished with a bunch of artificial Japanese cherry blossoms, and filled with candied cherries.
She beamed at it and at Margery who brought it to her.
"I'm so glad it's something I can divide with my nice boy," she said. "I'm going to give him 'most all the cherries. Maybe he won't mind if I keep the box and the flowers and the ribbon? Oh, he's right here! Will you, Ralph, care if I keep what's outside and give you the inside?"
"Not a bit, little Serene Highness! I don't want more than one bite of a cherry from the inside. I'm just your horse that you drove to win the race, you know."
"Didn't we have fun?" sighed Serena contentedly. "I never went to so nice a party, Miss Margery, and I'm six. Grandma said, 'What's the use of going, Serena, when you can't move about one bit?' But I was crazy to come. She didn't know Ralph was here. Neither did I. We didn't know there was a Ralph. Isn't it funny how you don't know people till you do know them, and then you love them?"
"It's wonderful, little Serena!" Margery assented with fervor. "And then you can't imagine how your old world used to look without them! I'm glad that you had such a happy time, dear. I'm very glad Ralph gave it to you!"
She smiled on Ralph, and he turned away. "I'm not feuding on my own account, you know, and anyway it wouldn't be this child's fault," he murmured.