the heart of the ball she would like to find a wishing-nut, that would
grant her wishes like an Aladdin's lamp whenever it was rubbed.

She must have fallen asleep in the midst of her day-dreaming, for it
seemed to her that it was only a minute after she closed her book, that
she heard the half-past five o'clock train whistling at the station, and
while she was still rubbing her eyes she saw her father coming up the
avenue.

All day she had had a lingering hope that he might bring her something
when he came out from the city. "If it's nothing but a bag of peanuts,"
she thought, "it will be better than having a birthday go by without
anything, 'specially when all the othahs have been neahly as nice as
Christmas."

She peeped out between the curtains, scanning him eagerly as he came
toward the house, but there was no package in either hand, and no
suggestive parcel bulged from any of his pockets.

"I'll not be a baby," Lloyd whispered to herself, winking her eyelids
rapidly to clear away a sort of mist that seemed to blur the landscape.
"I'm too old to care so much."

Still, it was such a disappointment, added to all the others that the day
had brought, that she buried her face in the cushions and cried softly.
She could hear her father's voice in the next room, presently. It seemed
quite loud and cheerful; more cheerful than it had sounded since her
mother's dreadful neuralgic headaches had begun. A few minutes later she
heard her mother laugh. It was such a welcome sound, that she hastily
dried her eyes and started to run in to see what had caused it, but she