“Next Saturday.”

“Why next Saturday?”

“Because then I’m eleven years old, and you know that a great many fairy princesses are never any older.”

Down went the tapestry.  “Your birthday!  You blessed little angel!  Eleven years old!  My goodness, how time flies!  Pretty soon you will be in long dresses, with your hair in a knot on the top of your head.  You never told me a word about it!”

“No, but I do now.  And I am just going to have a party—­a real party.  And I am going to invite everybody, all the girls I know and all the boys and all the old people.”

Felix had her beside him now, her fresh young cheek against his.  “You don’t tell me!  Well!  I never heard anything like it!  And what will your father say?”

Her face fell.  “Don’t let’s tell him!  Let’s have a surprise.”

Felix shook his head.  “I am afraid we could never do that, unless we locked him up in the cellar and did not give him a thing to eat until everything was ready.  Oh, just think how he would beg for mercy!”

Masie rubbed her cheek up and down that of Felix in disapproval.  “No, you wouldn’t be so mean to poor Popsy.”

“Well, then, suppose—­suppose—­” and he held her teasingly from him to note the effect of his words—­ “suppose we make him go away—­way off somewhere, to buy something—­so far away that he could not come back until the next day.  How would that do?”

“No, that won’t do—­not a little bit!  I’ve got a better plan.  You go right down-stairs this minute and tell him it’s all fixed, and that I’m going out this very afternoon to invite everybody myself.”

Felix made a wry fate.  “Suppose he sends me about my business?”

“He won’t.  He thinks you are the most wonderful man in the world—­he told Mr. Kelsey so; I heard him—­ and he won’t refuse you anything—­oh, Uncle Felix”—­ both arms were around his neck now, always her last argument—­“I do so want a birthday party and I want it right here in this room.”

Felix smoothed back the hair from her pleading eyes and kissed her tenderly on the forehead.  For a moment there was silence between them, he continuing to smooth back her hair, she cuddling the tighter, her usual way.  She always let him think a while and it always came out right.  But he had made up his mind.  It had been years since a birthday of his own had been celebrated; nor had he ever helped, so far as he could recollect, to celebrate the birthday of any child.  Yes, Masie should have her birthday, if he could bring it about, and it should be the happiest of all her life.

Suddenly he rose, releasing his neck from her grasp, and ran his eyes around the almost bare interior—­the big chair being the only article, so far, in place.  “It will make a grand banquet hall, Masie,” he said, as if speaking more to himself than to her.  “Let me see!” He walked half the length of the floor and began studying the walls and the bare rafters of the ceiling.  These last had once been yellow-washed, age and dust having turned the kalsomine to an old-gold tint, reminding him of a ceiling belonging to a Venetian palace.