“Aw, I done knock a tooth out!” he exclaimed, and began crying harder than before, feeling that he had been damaged beyond repair.

John Jay laughed when he found that nothing worse had happened than the loss of a little white front tooth, and soon dried Bud’s tears by promising that a new one would certainly fill the hole in time.

“Keep yoah mouf shet much as you can when Mammy comes home to-night,” he cautioned; “for I sut’n’ly don’t want to ketch a lickin’ on my buthday.  It’s mighty lucky the pan didn’t get a hole knocked in her.”

Mammy came home just before dark.  The children were on the fence waiting for her.  John Jay felt sure that if Miss Hallie knew that it was his birthday she would send him something.  He wondered if Mammy had told her.  The basket on the old woman’s head was always interesting to these children, for it never came back from Rosehaven empty.  The cook always saved the scraps for Sheba’s hungry little charges.  This evening John Jay kept his eyes fixed on it expectantly, as he followed it up the walk.  He had thrown one foot up behind him, and rested the toes of it in his clasped hands as he hopped along on the other.  Maybe there might be a birthday cake in that basket, with little candles on it.  He didn’t know, of course,—­but—­maybe.

They all crowded around, as Sheba put the basket on the table and took out some scraps of boiled ham, a handful of cookies, and half of an apple pie.  That was all.  John Jay looked at them a moment with misty eyes, and turned away with a lump in his throat.  He was beginning to grow discouraged.

Mammy was so tired that she did not cook anything for supper, as she had intended, but set out the contents of the basket beside the corn bread left from dinner.  Before they were through eating somebody called for sis’ Sheba to come quick, that Aunt Susan was having one of her old spells.

“Like enough I won’t get back for a good while,” said Mammy, as she hurriedly left the table.  “Put Ivy to bed as soon as you wash her face, John Jay, an’ go yo’self when the propah time comes.  Be a good boy now, and don’t forget to close the doah tight when you go in.”

When Ivy was safely tucked away among the pillows, the two boys sat down on the door-step to wait once more for the birthday Santa Claus.  John Jay repeated what the thoughtless fellow had said: 

“If I don’t get there by noon, it’ll be because something has happened; anyway, somebody’ll be prancing along about sundown.”  In the week just passed, Bud had come to believe in the birthday Santa Claus as firmly as John Jay.

“Wondah wot he’s doin’ now?” he said, after a long pause and an anxious glance down the darkening road.

Ah, well for those two trusting little hearts that they could not know!  He was sitting on the steps of the porch at Rosehaven with a guitar on his knee, and smiling tenderly into Sally Lou’s blue eyes as he sang, “Oh, yes, I ever will be true!”