" 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!"
It grew darker and darker. The katydids began their endless quarrel in
the trees. A night-owl hooted dismally over in the woods. The children
stopped talking, and sat in anxious silence. Presently Bud edged up
closer, and put a sympathetic arm around his brother. A moment after, he
began to cry.
"What you snufflin' for?" asked John Jay savagely. "'Tain't yo'
buthday."
"But I'm afraid you ain't goin' to have any eithah," sobbed the little
fellow, strangely wrought upon by this long silent waiting in the
darkness.
"Aw, you go 'long to bed," said John Jay, with a careless, grown-up air.
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