“Mm! Isn’t it beautiful?” exclaimed Grandma as she stood with Bobby and Alice and Pink admiring the table decorated for Pink’s birthday party. Everything was pink and white. The lovely white-frosted cake had pink candles in pink rose-holders—seven, one for each year and one to grow on. There were pink candies and pink flowers and pink caps for the little girls and boys to wear.
“‘And the ice cream is to be pink,’ Alice explained, ‘pink ice cream shaped like animals—dogs and bunnies and kittens.’
“My, but isn’t that fine!” said Grandma. “Now my first party wasn’t a bit like this. Maybe tonight if you are not too tired I’ll tell you about my party.”
And that night after they had told Grandma about Pink’s party she told them about hers.
“We didn’t have many parties when I was little,” Grandma began, “and we never had regular little girls’ parties. Everyone, big and little, came, and they were generally surprise parties and the guests would bring the refreshments with them. One evening going home from school, the girls were wishing that some one would get up a surprise party, when suddenly Annie Brierly said, ‘Why don’t we get up a party for Sarah, girls? Friday is her birthday. Do you think your Mother would care, Sarah?’
“‘We’d both help her,’ Callie Orbison put in before I could answer. ‘You don’t need to do much getting ready for a surprise party. We could have it Friday night, and Saturday we’d both come over and help clean up the house.’
“‘Not a soul but Callie and me would know you knew anything about it,’ urged Annie, ‘and we could have just loads of fun.’
“I promised to think about it, and the more I thought about it the better I liked the idea of having a party of my very own. It didn’t take much persuasion the next day to make me consent. Annie and Callie were delighted and immediately fell to making plans, but they agreed that nothing should be said to Mother until Thursday evening, the date set for the party being Friday night.
“The days that followed were full of mingled pleasure and pain for me. I was happy at the idea of having a real party, but it didn’t seem fair to deceive Mother. Once I thought of telling her all about it just as I told her about everything else. But I was afraid she would say I was too young to have a party, and I had never been to a party in my life. Sister Aggie was visiting Aunt Louisa in Clayville, and Mother had no one to help her except for what I could do mornings and evenings. But I would be at home all day Saturday, and Annie and Callie had said that they would help.
“Thursday morning Annie told me that she had baked a cake and put my initials on top in little red candies, and Callie said her mother was going to bake an election cake with spices and raisins in it. All day Thursday I kept thinking about the party. It wasn’t off my mind a minute. I couldn’t study for thinking about it, and I missed a word in spelling—the first word I’d missed that term—and had to go to the foot of the class.
“But by the time we had started home I had made up my mind to one thing, that if I could not have a party with everything open and above board I did not want one at all. And so I told the girls that I had changed my mind and did not want them to have a surprise party for me. They coaxed and argued and teased, but I was firm. I was sorry that Annie had baked a cake and I hated to disappoint them, but I did not want a party. The girls were cross with me, and I felt miserable when Annie turned in her gate without saying good-by.
“Aggie had come home from Clayville that afternoon, and she was so busy telling Mother the news and describing the latest fashions, and showing the things she had bought, that no one noticed me much. Not a word was said all evening about my birthday being so near. Even Charlie didn’t tease me about what he would do, such as ducking me in the rain barrel, as he always did, and I thought everyone had forgotten all about my birthday.
“But Friday morning just before I started to school Aggie gave me a plain little handkerchief that she had hemstitched before she went away, and then I knew for sure that she had not brought me anything from Clayville. And when Mother gave me a pair of common home-knit stockings, I thought I should cry right out before everybody instead of waiting until I got started to school.
“Annie and Callie were in a good humor again and as pleasant as could be, but I felt so unhappy that day that I didn’t notice that the girls at school seemed unusually happy and excited. When I finally did notice it, I was afraid that Annie and Callie had gone ahead with plans for the party. I accused them of this, but they denied it.
“‘No, no, we didn’t do another thing about the party,’ they declared. But they looked at each other and laughed when they said it, and I didn’t believe them.
“‘You did,’ I said, ‘you know you did.’
“‘Cross my heart and hope to die if we did,’ Callie insisted.
“‘Here’s some of the cake that I baked for your party that we didn’t have,’ said Annie. ‘Now will you believe us? I brought you girls each a piece, but it was a sin to cut that cake—it was such a beautiful cake.’ And she handed us each a slice of delicious, yellow sponge cake decorated with red candies.
“Mother had given me an errand to do at the store on my way home, so it was later than usual when, hungry and tired, I opened the kitchen door. Mother met me and took my bundles and books.
Out from the hall rushed Annie and Callie and seven other little girls
“‘Take your wraps off here, Sarah,’ she said. ‘Aggie has company in the sitting room.’ I didn’t hear anyone talking, but I took off my coat. Then Aggie called me and I went into the sitting room, but I stopped in amazement just inside the door.
“In the center of the room was a table set with Mother’s best linen and china and silver, and while I gazed at it, out from the hall rushed Annie and Callie and seven other little girls all near my own age dressed up in their Sunday frocks and each one thrusting some sort of package toward me.
“I couldn’t say a word—I just burst into tears. I went upstairs with Mother to wash my face and put on my best dress. She told me Aggie had written invitations on cards she had bought in Clayville, and Charlie had carried them to the girls that morning. Then I told Mother all about the party we had planned to have, and she said not to think any more about it but that she was glad I had told her.
“We played games—‘Pussy wants a corner’ and ‘Button, button, who’s got the button’ and ‘Hide the thimble’—and asked riddles and had a good time.
“Then we had supper. There were cold roast chicken, tiny hot biscuits and peach preserves, three kinds of cake, and hot chocolate that Aggie had learned to make in Clayville and none of us had ever tasted before.
“Mother and Aggie had given me those presents in the morning just to fool me. Aggie had brought me a lovely story book, and Mother had a string of pretty pink beads for me. Charlie gave me a little basket he had whittled out of a peach seed, and from Father I got a silver dollar.
“And now good night, pleasant dreams.”