"Mother--"
"Yes, dear?"
"Your eyes are like--"
"Like what, my dear little boy?"
"Like stars," he finished drowsily, then fell asleep, her hand still on his forehead.
[VIII]
THE ANIMALS' BIRTHDAY PARTY
Birthdays are always important events, but some are more important than others. The most important of all, of course, is one you can't remember at all--the zero birthday, when you were born.
After that, the fifth, I suppose, is the red letter day. A boy certainly begins to appreciate life when he gets to be five years old. Next, probably, would come the seventh, for a boy--or a girl--is pretty big by then, and able to do so many things. In old Bible days seven was supposed to be a sacred number, and even today many people think it lucky. Why, at the baseball games the men in the stands rise up in the seventh inning and stretch, they say, to bring victory to the home team.
The seventeenth birthday is the next great event. By that time a boy is quite grown up and ready for college; and on the twenty-first he can vote. But after that people don't think so much of birthdays until their seventieth or so, when they become very proud of them once more. Perhaps they grow like little children again. Wouldn't it be funny to have, say, eighty candles on one cake? But what cook or baker makes cakes big enough for that?