“Jack!  Jack!  Jack!” exclaimed Cousin Susy.

“I was only repeating my last golden text,” answered Jack.  “We don’t often have to give a feast, and as it was so extraordinary,” said Jack, saying the big word impressively, “I thought of my verse.  I suppose we’d better ask the people mother likes, and they are the poor, the halt, the blind, and the deaf; for we haven’t any rich neighbors, nor any kinsmen, except you, dear Cousin Susy.”

“Well, I’m a kinswoman and a neighbor, dear, but I’m not rich.  Now, let me see,” said Miss Susy, smoothing out the shining white folds of Kitty Hardy’s train.  “We will send notes, and you must write them.  There is old Ralph, the peddler, who is too deaf to hear if you shout at him ever and ever so much, but he’ll enjoy seeing a good time; and we’ll have Florrie Maynard, with her crutches and her banjo, and she’ll have a happy time and sing for us; and Mrs. Maloney, the laundress, with her blind Patsy.  I don’t see Jackie, but you’ll have a Scripture party after all.  Run along and write your letters, and to-night we’ll trot around and deliver them.”

This was the letter Jack wrote: 

“DEAR FRIEND:—­My mother’s going to have a birthday next Saturday night, and she’ll be thirty-six years old.  That’s pretty old.  So I’m going to give her a surprise birthday party, and Cousin Susy’s helping me with the surprise.  Please come and help too, at eight o’clock sharp.

                          “Yours truly,
          
                                                  “JACK.”

When this note was received everybody decided to go, and, which Jack did not expect, everybody decided to take a present along.

“You’ll spend all my money, won’t you?” said Jack.

“Certainly, my boy, I will, every penny.  Except, perhaps, the old silver sixpence.  Suppose we give that to the mother as a keepsake?”

“Very well, you know best.  All I want is that she shall have a good time, a very good time.  She’s such a good mother.”

“Jack,” said Susy, “you make me think of some verses I saw in a book the other day.  Let me read them to you.”  And Cousin Susy, who had a way of copying favorite poems and keeping them, fished out this one from her basket: 

    LITTLE HANS.

    Little Hans was helping mother
      Carry home the lady’s basket;
    Chubby hands of course were lifting
      One great handle—­can you ask it? 
    As he tugged away beside her,
      Feeling oh! so brave and strong,
    Little Hans was softly singing
      To himself a little song: 

    “Some time I’ll be tall as father,
      Though I think it’s very funny,
    And I’ll work and build big houses,
      And give mother all the money,
    For,” and little Hans stopped singing,
      Feeling oh! so strong and grand,
    “I have got the sweetest mother
      You can find in all the land.”