“Hey, Sambo,” called the young man suddenly in his ear.  “What do you know?”

John Jay gave a start, and looked up at the amused faces above him.  He took the question seriously, and thought he must really tell what he knew; but just at that moment he could remember only one thing in all the wide world.  Every other bit of information seemed to desert him.  So he stammered, “I—­I know M—­Miss Hallie, she’s nineteen this Satiddy, an’ I’ll be nine next Satiddy.”

Miss Sally Lou laughed so gaily that her young cavalier made another effort to please her.

“Is that so!” he exclaimed, as if surprised.  “It’s a mighty lucky thing you told me that, now, or I never would have thought to bring you anything.  You didn’t know that I am a sort of birthday Santa Claus, did you?  Just look out for me next Saturday.  If I’m not there by breakfast-time, wait till noon, and if I don’t get there by that time it’ll be because something has happened; anyway, somebody’ll be prancing along about sundown.”

“Oh, come along, Raleigh,” said Miss Sally Lou, moving off toward the house.  “You’re such a tease.”

John Jay, sitting beside that wonderful fountain and surrounded by so many strange, beautiful things, did not think it at all queer that such an unheard-of person as a birthday Santa Claus should suddenly step out from the midst of the enchantment and speak to him.

“A blue velvet cape on,” he said to himself, thinking how he should describe him to Bud.  “An’ gole buckles on his shoes, an’ a sword on, an’ a long white feathah in his hat.  Cricky!  An’ it was his hawse I done held!  Maybe it will be somethin’ mighty fine what he’s goin’ to bring me, ’cause I did that!”

Later he found his way to the kitchen, where Sheba was washing dishes.  The cook gave him a plate of ice-cream and some scraps of cake.  She was telling Sheba how beautiful Miss Hallie’s birthday cake looked at dinner, with its nineteen little wax candles all aflame.  That was the last thing John Jay remembered, until some one shook him, and told him it was time to go home.  He had fallen asleep with a spoon in his hand.

Mammy was afraid to take the short cut through the woods after dark, so she led him away round by the toll-gate.  He was so sleepy that he staggered up against her every few steps, and he would have dropped down on the first log he came to, if she had not kept tight hold of his hand all the way.

When they reached Uncle Billy’s house, he had just gone out to draw a pitcher of water.  Mammy stopped to get a drink, and John Jay leaned up against the well-shed.  The rumbling of the windlass and the fall of the bucket against the water below aroused him somewhat, and by the time he had swallowed half a gourdful of the cold well-water he was wide awake.

Uncle Billy went up to the cabin with them in order to hear an account of the party, and to walk back with Aunt Susan.  John Jay fell behind.  He could not remember ever having been out so late at night before, and he had never seen the sky so full of stars.  They made him think of something that Aunt Susan had told him.  She said that if he counted seven stars for seven nights, at the same time repeating a charm which she taught him, and making a wish, he’d certainly get what he wanted at the end of the week.