“Wear it,” chirped Miss Polly, throwing the silken guard around his neck, “so you will never forget my birthday, Dan.”
And then a big Japanese gong sounded the call to the flower-decked tables, where busy waiters were soon serving a veritable fairy feast. There were cakes of table-size and shape and color; little baskets and boxes full of wonderful bonbons; nuts sugared and glazed until they did not seem nuts at all; ice-cream birds in nests of spun sugar; “kisses” that snapped into hats and wreaths and caps. And all the while the band played, and the jewelled lights twinkled, and the stars shone far away above the arching trees. And Dan, with his watch around his neck, held his place as the winner of the prize at Miss Polly’s side, feeling as if he were in some dizzy dream. Then there were more games, and a grand hide-and-seek, in which dad and some of the grown-ups joined.
Dan had found an especially fine place under the gnarled boughs of an old cedar tree, that would have held its head high in the starlight if some of dad’s gardeners had not twisted it out of growth and shape. Hiding under the crooked shadows, Dan was listening to the merry shouts through maze and garden, when he became suddenly conscious of a change in their tone. The voices grew sharp, shrill, excited, and then little Polly burst impetuously into his hiding place,—a sobbing, trembling, indignant little Polly, followed by a score of breathless young guests.
“I don’t believe it!” she was crying tempestuously. “I won’t believe it! You’re just telling horrid stories on Dan, because I like him and he got the prize.”
“O Pollykins! Pollykins!” came Miss Stella’s low, chiding voice.
“Halloo! halloo! What’s the trouble?” rose dad’s deep tones above the clamor. “My little girl crying,—crying?”
“Yes, I am!” was the sobbing answer. “I can’t help it, dad. The girls are all whispering mean, horrid stories about Dan, and I made them tell me all they said they had heard. I don’t believe them, and I won’t believe them! I told them I wouldn’t believe them,—that I would come right to Dan and let him speak for himself.—Were you ever a newsboy and a beggar boy, Dan? Did—did you ever black boots? Have you an aunt in the poorhouse, as Minna Foster says?”
XVIII.—Back Into Line.
There was a moment’s pause. Dan was really too bewildered to speak. He felt he was reeling down from the rainbow heights to which Miss Polly had led him, and the shock took away his breath.
“It’s all—all a horrid story; I’m sure it is,—isn’t it, Dan?” pleaded his little friend, tremulously.