The Dickinson press., 1885-03-21
The BIRTHDAY PRESENT,

11kH Dk1V Il lAUh 1 4 lvlIDlly Ii
Lois stitched away night and day at
dshirts and blue-and- white shirts and
gray. They were the spells and tails
a that kept her all the bright hours
of the brightest days, as we'll as the
dark hours of the darkest ones, in the
nj of the window of her dingy lit
tie room.
It was not a dirty room. She kept
it clean, but a mean yellow paper, and
mean yellow doors, and a blackened
ceiling, and secondhand furniture, will
look dingy; and tasteful rooms with
flowers and birds, and pretty bits of
lace curtains, and all that, cannot be
kept up by an honest young mi who
lives by making flannel shirts and has o
little sister to care for also.
To be sure, Trot was the Joy of Lois's
life-the one thing she had left to love.
Once they had been so happy. Their
father, amerry, black-eyed sea captain,
had kept a home for them in a sweet
country place. Their mother, bright
checked and curly haired, had been an
elder sister to Lois, Oh, what merry
times they had had!
But the dear fathers ship went down
n dreadful night, and when the news
came his wife only lived long enough to
kiss the little dead baby they put into
her arms, and Lois vt 10 and Trot at 8
were left alone IN the world.
The house was sold. The orphans
were not too we'll dealt with. There
were debts to be paid; and, though one
or two kind captains made up a::purse for
the little girls, they had families them
selves, were not rich, and were men who
were always On the wing. Still there
was enough to live on for o year, and
Jack babe Lois be of good cheer.
Jack was engaged to Lois. This voy-
age ended, he would be first mate, and
then, if she would marry him, there
would always be q home for Trot. Lois
would have married jack if he had no
chance of promotion, and terrible as was
her grief, his love kept her heart from
breaking.
But the clouds were gathering dark
er and darker about her young Life.
Jack sailed away one day, kissing her
before he went with long, lingering kis-
ses, and bidding her think only of his
return.
And alas! that happened which hap
pensnow and then on the great ocean
the vessel was not heard of again. It
was never spoken it did not arrive in
port; no vestige of its existence was ever
washed ashore where men who under
stand such things could find it. No
fgurehead, no steamer marked with
name, no bottle in which some bit of
hurried writing told its fate.
After awhile old sailors knew nothing
ever would be heard of the ship, and
they told Lois, whose heart still chung
to hope.
And now three years were gone, and
Lois stitched at the flannel shirts in her
city room, and Trot grew up thin and
quiet aud e%agereyed wondering at fate,
and always looking back on merry
Christmas days and midsummer holidays
0l10 PUHdS OA40-COMll d11u Uuc CURLY
haired mother who laughed so much,
and Lois, with dimples in her cheeks,
walking with Jack in the moonlight,
and at herself, q rosy child, with a store
of dolls and sugar-plums and pretty
pink and blue dresses, kisses imnumer-
able, and she the. pet of the household.
as though she were some one else.
Yet Lois loved her, and she always
found herself in her arms, when she
awoke in the morning. Only Lois was
sad and poor, and there seemed nothing
bright in life.
On her eleventh birthday, to be sure,
she had a surprise, a beautiful book with
gilt cover and gay pictures. She did not
guess how much night work Lois had
done to earn it, and now she was hard
at work thinking, thinking, thinking,
what she should do that she might give
Lois a present on her birthday. Lois
would be 81 on the Sd Of May.
To do this Trot knew that she must
earn some money. She could not sew
we'll enough, and though she was indus
trious and did all the homework and
bought the provisions and cooked them
and helped carry home the bundles,
that made no money.
When Trot went to the bakers for
bread, or to the butchers for say, a
neck of mutton or some sausages, or to
the cheap store, where coffee was cheap
or than 1t was anywhere else, she
thought of this constantly.
She asked the prices of the pretty
things in the shops, Of oollars, and cuffs,
of neckties, of books, of jewelry of the
cheaper sort found in trimming stores.
Things seemed very dear to Trot, but
one who only hoped might as we'll hope
for pounds as for pence.
And, sometimes, Trot lying alone in
bed before Lois finished her work and
came also to rest her pretty, weary
head on the coarse pillow case, would
wish that there were fairies like the
fairies in her book, who came at night
to put shillings into good children's
shoes. At last the very day before
Lois's birthday, it seemed to Trot that
this happened.
Trot had a hole in her shoe, right in
the sole, close to the edge where it was
fastened to the upper. 1t let in the
water in rainy weather.
1t was a trap for pebbles and splin-
tiers, &c that Trot was often compelled
to hop on one foot to q doorstep and
take the intruder out. And one day,
when she had been buying a penny
mince PIE, not for dessert but for din
ner, something slipped in that hurt her
q good deal, and that seemed to her