skirts of her riding-coat, she shrank back from the glass.

"Oo-oo!" she breathed, aghast. The gray eyes swam.

After a moment, however, she blinked resolutely to clear her sight,
stepped forward again, and, straightening her slender little figure to
its utmost height, measured herself a second time against the mirror.

But--as before--the top of her yellow head did not reach above the
ink-mark--not by the smallest part of an inch! So there was no longer
any reason to hope! The worst was true! She had drawn the tiny line
across the edge of the bevel the evening before, when she was only six
years old; now it was mid-morning of another day, and she was
seven--_yet she was not a whit taller!_

The tears began to overflow. She pressed her embroidered handkerchief to
her eyes. Then, stifling a sob, she crossed the nursery, stumbling once
or twice as she made toward the long cushioned seat that stretched the
whole width of the front window. There, among the down-filled pillows,
with her loose hair falling about her wet cheeks and screening them, she
lay down.

For months she had looked forward with secret longing to this seventh
anniversary. Every morning she had taken down the rose-embossed calendar
that stood on the top of her gold-and-white writing-desk and tallied off
another of the days that intervened before her birthday. And the
previous evening she had measured herself against the pier glass without
even a single misgiving.

She rose at an early hour. Her waking look was toward the pier glass.