"Birthday presents!" cried Jane, the moment she spied them; and sprang
forward. "Oh, I wonder what they are! What do _you_ guess, Gwendolyn?"

Gwendolyn followed slowly, blinking against the light. "I can't guess,"
she said without enthusiasm. The glass-fronted case was full of toys,
none of which she particularly cherished. (Indeed, most of them were
carefully wrapped from sight.) New ones would merely form an addition.

"Well, what would you _like?_" queried Jane, catching up the small
package and shaking it.

Gwendolyn suddenly looked very earnest.

"Most in the whole _world?_" she asked.

"Yes, what?" Jane dropped the small package and shook the large one.

"In the whole, whole big world?" went on Gwendolyn--to herself rather
than to her nurse. She was not looking at the table, but toward a
curtained window, and the gray eyes had a tender faraway expression.
There was a faint conventional pattern in the brocade of the heavy
hangings. It suggested trees with graceful down-growing boughs. She
clasped her hands. "I want to live out in the woods," she said, "at
Johnnie Blake's cottage by the stream that's got fish in it."

Jane set the big package down with a thump. "That's _awful_ selfish of
you," she declared warmly. "For you know right well that Thomas and _I_
wouldn't like to leave the city and live away out in the country.
_Would_ we, Thomas?"--for he had just entered.