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“No more promises, Charley,” Uncle Hank said, stuffing away at something he held out of Hilda’s sight. “If you’re leaving it to me, I say either dance up with the doll for her birthday or don’t hurt the poor baby any worse than she’s been already hurt with promises.”

“Her birthday!” Hilda swallowed a sob at her father’s startled tone. “Hank—do you know I’d forgotten absolutely that to-morrow is the child’s birthday!”

Something warm came to the little watcher from the glance of Uncle Hank’s blue eyes as he looked up. He hadn’t forgotten it. She guessed now that when he was in the kitchen there with Missou’ so long, and she wasn’t allowed to come in, it must have been a birthday cake that was being baked. She tried to tell herself that this would make up for the lack of a doll. She wished Uncle Hank wouldn’t say that about promises—they were better than nothing—better, anyhow, than having some such frightful thing as that which dangled from her father’s hand offered to her as a doll. She was glad when he insisted rather desperately: