She unpinned the paper and read aloud,—
"I wish to be given to a sick little girl or a lame girl."
It was half a minute before anybody could take the sense of this. What, wasn't it Ethel's doll, after all? Then they understood it, and all cried out, "Oh, Sadie! Sadie! Sadie!"
The poor bewildered child turned very pale. This was too much happiness for her. She wasn't used to anything like this. She rose to her feet, caught up her crutches,—though where she wanted to go she did not know,—dropped them, and fell down crying.
But she was crying for joy. It wasn't possible, no, surely it wasn't possible that this loveliest of all presents was intended for her.
And there was Miss Pike. She stood holding the doll's trunk in her hand, full of the dainty underclothing and every-day dresses and outside wraps that she had been making for weeks. But when she saw Sadie crying I must confess she cried, too, though she was intending to laugh. But you know laughter and tears lie very near together. And, indeed, it was very touching to everybody when Sadie sobbed out, not knowing any one heard her,—
"My dolly! Oh, I never 'spected to have such a good time as this, not till I went to Heaven!"
Thus ended Ethel's first party. And everybody said it was a great success. "But where was the kettledrum? I kept looking and looking, and I didn't see it," mourned Flaxie Frizzle's Kittyleen.
THE END.