“Try and see,” said Pirlaps; but Avrillia whispered in her ear, “They aren’t flames, dear:  they’re only colored perfumes.”

So, reassured, Sara took her seat on the cake; and at once she saw that it made a very nice sort of throne.  The frosting was resilient, but firm; and she now saw that the candles were arranged so that they made a sort of semicircle about her.  Just as Avrillia had said, she could pass her hands across their wicks without being burned at all; they only winked and breathed out sweet odors—­each flame a different color and scent.  They were as tall as her head, as she sat among them; and the one at her right ear was of isthagaria, while the one on the left faintly suggested tinnulalia-flowers.

Before she had finished examining the candles, the Plynck flew down with the first present.  “A lock of my hair,” she said, looking eager, but a little embarrassed; and she actually perched on the rim of the pool while Sara unwrapped it, so that she might see whether or not she was pleased.  But I do not need to tell you that Sara was; for it was one of her loveliest tail-feathers, a rich, curling plume of the deepest rose, from which sweet odors were shaken out as Sara lifted it to the light.  Weeks afterward, when Sara astonished her mother by begging for the pink plume on her prettiest hat, what she was really pining for was a lock of the Plynck’s hair.

Avrillia came next with her present.  It was a little urn of jade and ivory, and it was full to the top of dried poems written on rose-leaves.  Have you ever seen the quaint rose-jars some old-fashioned ladies have in their parlors?  Well, some one of them, when she was little, saw one of Avrillia’s poem-jars; and she made these others in a homesick effort to imitate it.  And the fragrance—­like nothing else you ever smelled—­is the perfume of Avrillia’s poems, as nearly as that little old-fashioned lady, after she grew up, could remember it.

You would not expect me to remember all of the presents Sara got that day.  But a good many I can remember.  Pirlaps brought her a picture he had painted; a very beautiful view of Nothing from Avrillia’s balcony.  Yassuh brought her a delicious Crumb; it was wrapped in a sticky paper covered with his finger-prints, but inside the paper was one of Avrillia’s exquisite napkins of embroidered mist.  The First Gunkus, remembering how she had loved the mountain, brought her a little live Laugh.  He had climbed the mountain and trapped it for her, and made her a little cage to take it home with.  It was very funny to hear it tittering about inside.  The rest of the Gunki had clubbed together and bought her a gold-headed tuning-fork, so that she might be sure their answers were in tune.  The Snimmy’s wife brought her three large onions, neatly hemmed and tied in a bouquet with purple ribbon; the Snimmy himself a striped paper bag full of gum-drops.  And the Snoodle’s present was too cunning for anything!  It was a