I laughed at Tony and from sheer happiness at thinking that my father was going with us in the fine company of the Colonel and Miss Priscilla.  I wonder what we would do, if we had to have somebody go to places with us who thought they had to chaperon us?  Miss Prissy is just one of us and would go if we had to ask somebody like Belle’s mother, for instance, who is always talking about chaperons, to go also.

As I have remarked before, Byrdsville is a very different place from most of the world, and I thank God that he led me to it and “made me to lie down in its green pastures, beside its still waters.”  I found that in the Bible the other night, and it fitted me and Byrdsville.  Good-night, Louise!

Of course when I grow up I shall have many things happen to me, like graduating from Byrdsville Academy, marrying, and being president of clubs, and going to balls and theaters in the city, if I have to; but there will never be a night like this one of my sixteenth birthday, April twenty-second.

Miss Priscilla Talbot was the first slice out of the happiness birthday cake when we met down at her house to get into the wagon.  I can never have things here at my home like that, because of the precious sick thing upstairs that cannot be disturbed, but who is the core of my heart, anyway, even if she doesn’t know it.

But of all astonishing things, this is what Miss Priscilla did as we were all lined up for Father and the Colonel to help us into the wagon on the great mound of hay, to the front of which four horses were hitched.

“And now to start off the birthday we must each give Phyllis a kiss, as we would do if we were blowing out the candies on the cake that is packed in the basket; and each one whisper a wish to her, as they give her a kiss.  I will be first and the Colonel next,” she said and she bent down and kissed me and whispered:  “A happy sixteenth year.”

I never had been kissed—­even Father never did it to me, because I have been more like a son than a daughter, and he hasn’t thought of it.  To get a whole wagonload of them at one time, and unaccustomed to them, was enough to paralyze any girl, and I stood dumb and took it—­them, I mean.  The blow-out-the-candle-with-a-kiss-wish is one of the first family birthday customs in Byrdsville, and I felt that it was right to subscribe to it.  I didn’t mind when I saw the boys were going to refuse firmly to do it and just shake hands instead.

“Bully for you, Bubble, and a pound or two to cover your elbows,” Tony exploded while he nearly pumped my arm out of the socket.  Everybody laughed, because I am getting thin with so much growing.

The Colonel’s kiss was a ceremonial, like you have in church or at graduation day, and his wish took five minutes to say, but the tall Willis choked up my throat with the lump by whispering a hope for my mother, which can never be, I know.

Next the Idol kissed my hand with grace like is in a story-book and which made my whole arm act like a poker.  Father hugged me with all the energy he hadn’t been using on me all my life.  It hurt me happily.