checked towel on the lowest limb of the arbor-vita tree. Then the
little girls all ran to sit down in a row on the lowest step of the
back gallery, with their little feet on the gravel below. Sister
Angela walked the length of the row, and gave to each little girl in
the row a sweet tiny cake, or maybe Sister Angela walked twice down
the row and gave to each little girl two cakes, or sometimes maybe
she walked three times down the row, and then each little girl had
three cakes; but no one little girl ever had more than every other
little girl.

Always Sister Angela sat a little way off from the row of the little
girls. She always sat on a bench under the great magnoliatree and
watched the tiny girls as they ate their tiny cakes.

And always the pink checked towel waved itself ever so softly to and
fro on the lowest limb of the arbor-vitae-tree, for that was the way
that pink checked towels did to help to dry themselves after helping
to dry so many little pink fingers. Often, so often, little brown
sparrows came hopping to the gravel to pick up any tiny crumbs of
cake that the little girls dropped, but you may be sure that they
did not drop so very many, many little brown crumbs for little brown
birds to find.

But if they were dropped, even if by rare chance were the crumbs so
large as to be nearly as large as half of a cake--why then, that
crumb had to stay for those little birds. It was the law! The law
that the little girls had made for themselves, and nobody but
themselves knew about that law--for the good of the birds. But no
little girl cared to disobey that law of their own that nobody but
themselves knew about, for if one had--how dreadful it would have