United States or Luxembourg ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Well," she began reflectively, not willing to acknowledge that she had never known the exact date, "I'm nevah ve'y p'tick'lah 'bout its obsa'vation. It's on a Monday, long in early garden-makin' time." They had come to a little brook, bridged by a wide, hewed log. When they had crossed in careful silence, John Jay began again. "Mammy, when's my buthday?"
He sat on the edge of the trundle-bed a moment, whispering brokenly, "They wasn't anybody livin' that cared 'bout it's bein' my buthday!" Then throwing himself face downward on his pillow, he cried softly with long choking sobs, until he fell asleep. Although John Jay bore many a deep scar, both in mind and body, very little of his life had been given to sackcloth and ashes.
Miss Hallie done give me an invite me an' Mammy." "Whose goin' to stay with me an' Ivy?" asked Bud, anxiously. "Aunt Susan, I reckon," answered John Jay. "Mammy tole me to go ask her. Come along with me, an' I'll tell you what all Miss Hallie got for her buthday. I reckon she had mos' a thousand presents, an' a box of candy half as big as Ivy." Bud opened his eyes in amazement.
"I kaint tell 'zactly, honey," she answered, "'twel I adds it up." As she began counting on her fingers, her skirts slipped lower and lower from her grasp, until they brushed the dew of the wayside weeds. "Yes, that's it," she announced at last. "Miss Hallie is nineteen this Satiddy, and you'll be nine next Satiddy. A week from to-day is yoah buthday.
Presently Bud edged up closer, and put a sympathetic arm around his brother. A moment after, he began to cry. "What you snufflin' for?" asked John Jay savagely. "'Tain't yo' buthday." "But I'm afraid you ain't goin' to have any eithah," sobbed the little fellow, strangely wrought upon by this long silent waiting in the darkness.
"Keep yoah mouf shet much as you can when Mammy comes home to-night," he cautioned; "for I sut'n'ly don't want to ketch a lickin' on my buthday. It's mighty lucky the pan didn't get a hole knocked in her." Mammy came home just before dark. The children were on the fence waiting for her. John Jay felt sure that if Miss Hallie knew that it was his birthday she would send him something.
The lights, the music, the white-robed figures, and above all, that wonderful fountain looking as if it must have sprung from some "sea of glass mingled with fire," did not belong to the earth with which he was acquainted. He repeated some part of that recollection to Bud every day for a week, always ending with the sentence uppermost in his thought: "And next Satiddy I has a buthday."
After he had speared a piece of bacon with his two-tined fork, and landed it safely on his plate, he rolled his eyes around the table. "Did you know this is my buthday, Mammy?" he asked. "I'm nine yeahs ole to-day." "That's so, honey," she answered, cheerfully. "You'se gettin' to be a big boy now, plenty big enough to keep out o' mischief an' take keer o' yo' clothes.
Word Of The Day