And the surprise was not dolls’ pelerines, but books.  “Little Women” was one, which sent Diana and Hazel off for a delicious two hours’ read up in their own room until dinner.

After dinner, Miss Craydocke came, in her purple and white striped mohair and her white lace neckerchief; and at three o’clock Uncle Titus walked in, with his coat pockets so bulgy and rustling and odorous of peppermint and sassafras, that it was no use to pretend to wait and be unconscious, but a pure mercy to unload him so that he might be able to sit down.

Nobody knows to this day where he got them; he must have ordered them somewhere, one would think, long enough before to have special moulds and implements made; but there were large, beautiful cockles,—­not of the old flour-paste sort, but of clear, sparkling sugar, rose-color, and amber, and white, with little slips of tinted paper tucked within, and these printed delicately with pretty rhymes and couplets, from real poets; things to be truly treasured, yet simple, for children’s apprehension, and fancy, and fun.  And there were “Salem gibraltars,” such as we only get out of Essex County now and then, for a big charitable Fair, when Salem and everywhere else gets its spirit up to send its best and most especial; and there were toys and devices in sugar—­flowers and animals, hats, bonnets, and boots, apples, and cucumbers,—­such as Diana and Hazel, and even Desire and Helena had never seen before.

“It isn’t quite fair,” said good Miss Craydocke.  “We were to go back to the old, simple fashions of things; and here you are beginning over again already with sumptuous inventions.  It’s the very way it came about before, till it was all spoilt.”

“No,” said Uncle Titus, stoutly.  “It’s only ’Old and New,’—­the very selfsame good old notions brought to a little modern perfection.  They’re not French flummery, either; and there’s not a drop of gin, or a flavor of prussic acid, or any other abominable chemical, in one of those contrivances.  They’re as innocent as they look; good honest mint and spice and checkerberry and lemon and rose.  I know the man that made ’em!”

Helena Ledwith began to think that the first person, singular or plural, might have a good time; but that awful third!  Helena’s “they” was as potent and tremendous as her mother’s.

“It’s nice,” she said to Hazel; “but they don’t have inch things.  I never saw them at a party.  And they don’t play games; they always dance.  And it’s broad, hot daylight; and—­you haven’t asked a single boy!”

“Why, I don’t know any!  Only Jimmy Scarup; and I guess he’d rather play ball, and break windows!”

“Jimmy Scarup!” And Helena turned away, hopeless of Hazel’s comprehending.

But “they” came; and “they” turned right into “we.”

It was not a party; it was something altogether fresh and new; the house was a new, beautiful place; it was like the country.  And Aspen Street, when you got down there, was so still and shady and sweet smelling and pleasant.  They experienced the delight of finding out something.