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was, and finally
thrusting his saucy glances into all the windows to see how many
persons had needed him.
"Come, come, you city-folks!" cried the Sun. "Your neighbors in the
country were up before I was, and have eaten their breakfasts, and half
cleared it away by this time; and here are you just beginning to dress
yourselves! Hurry up, I say! hurry up! It is the last day of October,
don't you know? and to-morrow will be November.
"But, at the corner house of a handsome square, the Sun found himself
better satisfied; for through the windows of the dining-room he saw a
lady and gentleman seated at the table, having apparently almost
finished their breakfast.
"That is better," remarked the Sun: and, thrusting one of his slender
golden fingers through the window, he touched the stag's head upon the
cover of the silver coffee-pot; glanced off, and sparkled in the cut glass
of the goblets and egg-glasses; flickered across the white and gilt china;
pierced the fiery heart of the diamond upon the first finger of the lady's
left hand, and then, creeping swiftly up her white throat, played
joyously in her golden curls, and even darted into her soft blue eyes,
making them sparkle as brilliantly as the diamond.
"The sun shines directly in your face, Fanny," said Mr. Legrange,
admiring the color in his wife's hair. "Shall I lower the shade?"
"Oh, no! thank you. I never want the sunshine shut out," replied she,
moving her chair a little.

"Not to-day of all days in the year, I suppose; not on the birthday of our
little Sunshine. And where is she?" asked Mr. Legrange, half turning
his chair from the table to the fire, and unfolding the damp newspaper
beside his plate.
"I told Susan to send her down as soon as she had done her breakfast.
Hark! I hear her." And the Sun, drawing his finger across the mother's
lips, helped them to so bright a smile, that her husband said,--
"I am afraid we have more than our share of Sunshine, or at least that I
have, little wife."
The bright smile grew so bright as the lady bent a little toward her
husband, that the Sun whispered,--
"There's no need of sun here, I plainly see," but, for all that, crept
farther into the room; while the door opened, and in skipped a little girl,
who might have been taken for the beautiful lady at the head of the
table suddenly diminished to childish proportions, and dressed in
childish costume, but with all her beauty intensified by the
condensation: for the blue eyes were as large and clear, and even
deeper in their tint; the clustering hair was of a brighter gold; and the
fair skin pearlier in its whiteness, and richer in its rosiness; while the
gay exuberance of life, glowing and sparkling from every curve and
dimple of the child's face and figure, was, even in the happy mother's
face, somewhat dimmed by the shadows that still must fall upon every
life past its morning, be it never so happy, or never so prosperous.
"Morning, mamma and papa. It's my birthday; and I'm six years
old,--six, six years old! One, two, three, four, five, six years old! Susan
told them all to me, and Susan said she guessed papa didn't forgotten it.
She didn't forgotten it; and see!"
The child held up a gay horn of sugar-plums fluttering with ribbons,
and then, hugging it to her breast with one hand, plunged the other in,
and offered a little fistful of the comfits, first to her father, and then to
her mother. Both smilingly declined the treat, explaining that they had
but just done breakfast: and the young lady, dropping some back into

the horn, thrust the rest into her own mouth, saying, "So has I; but I like
candy all the day."
"Come here, you little Sunshine," said Mr. Legrange, drawing her
toward him. "So Susie thought I hadn't forgotten your birthday, eh?
Well, do you know what they always do to people on their birthdays?"
"Give 'em presents," replied the child promptly, as she desperately
swallowed the mouthful of candy.
"Ho, ho! that's it is it? No; but, besides that, they always pull their ears
as many times as they are years old. Now, then, don't you wish I had
forgotten it?"
Sunshine's eyes grew a little larger, and travelled swiftly toward her
mother's face, coming back to her father's with a smile.
"I don't believe you'd hurt me much, papa," said she, nestling close to
his side.
The father folded her tightly in his arms, lifting her to a seat upon his
knee.
"I don't believe I would, little Sunshine. Well, then, sometimes, instead
of pinches, they give little girls as