A hundred dainty circulars, printed in black and scarlet on Irish linen paper, had been sent to those ladies on Mrs. Bird's calling-list who had children between the ages of five and twelve, that being Polly's chosen limit of age.

These notes of invitation read as follows:–

"Come, tell us a story!"

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR

Mrs. Donald Bird requests the pleasure of your company from 4.30 to 5.30 o'clock on Mondays or Thursdays from November to March inclusive.

FIRST GROUP: Mondays. Children from 5 to 8 years.

SECOND GROUP: Thursdays. " " 8 " 12 years.

Each group limited in number to twenty-four.

Miss Pauline Oliver will tell stories suitable to the ages of the children, adapted to their prevailing interests, and appropriate to the special months of the year.

These stories will be chosen with the greatest care, and will embrace representative tales of all classes,–narrative, realistic, scientific, imaginative, and historical. They will be illustrated by songs and black-board sketches. Terms for the Series (Twenty Hours), Five Dollars.

R.S.V.P.

Polly felt an absolute sense of suffocation as she saw Mrs. Bird seal and address the last square envelope.

"If anybody does come," she said, somewhat sadly, "I am afraid it will be only that the story hour is at your lovely house."

"Don't be so foolishly independent, my child. If I gather the groups, it is only you who will be able to hold them together. I am your manager, and it is my duty to make the accessories as perfect as possible. When the scenery and costumes and stage-settings are complete, you enter and do the real work, I retire, and the sole responsibility for success or failure rests upon your shoulders; I should think that would be enough to satisfy the most energetic young woman. I had decided on the library as the scene of action; an open fire is indispensable, and that room is delightfully large when the centre-table is lifted out: but I am afraid it is hardly secluded enough, and that people might trouble you by coming in; so what do you think of the music-room upstairs? You will have your fire, your piano, plenty of space, and a private entrance for the chicks, who can lay their wraps in the hall as they pass up. I will take the large Turkish rug from the red guest-chamber,–that will make the room look warmer,–and I have a dozen other charming devices which I will give you later as surprises."

"If I were half as sure of my part as I am of yours, dear Fairy Godmother, we should have nothing to fear. I have a general plan mapped out for the stories, but a great deal of the work will have to be done from week to week, as I go on. I shall use the same programme in the main for both groups, but I shall simplify everything and illustrate more freely for the little ones, telling the historical and scientific stories with much more detail to the older group. This is what Mr. Bird calls my 'basic idea,' which will be filled out from week to week according to inspiration. For November, I shall make autumn, the harvest, and Thanksgiving the starting-point. I am all ready with my historical story of 'The First Thanksgiving,' for I told it at the Children's Hospital last year, and it went beautifully.

"I have one doll dressed in Dutch costume, to show how the children looked that the little Pilgrims played with in Holland; and another dressed like a Puritan maiden, to show them the simple old New England gown. Then I have two fine pictures of Miles Standish and the Indian chief Massasoit.

"For December and January I shall have Christmas and winter, and frost and ice and snow, with the contrasts of eastern and Californian climates."

"I can get the Immigration Bureau to give you a percentage on that story, Polly," said Uncle Jack Bird, who had strolled in and taken a seat. "Just make your facts strong enough, and you can make a handsome thing out of that idea."

"Don't interrupt us, Jack," said Mrs. Bird; "and go directly out, if you please. You were not asked to this party."

"Where was I?" continued Polly. "Oh yes,–the contrast between Californian and eastern winters; and January will have a moral story or two, you know,–New Year's resolutions, and all that. February will be full of sentiment and patriotism,–St. Valentine's Day and Washington's Birthday,–I can hardly wait for that, there are so many lovely things to do in that month. March will bring in the first hint of spring. The winds will serve for my science story; and as it chances to be a presidential year, we will celebrate Inauguration Day, and have some history, if a good many subscribers come in."

"Why do you say 'if,' Polly? Multitudes of names are coming in. I have told you so from the beginning."

"Very well, then; when a sufficient number of names are entered, I should like to spend ten dollars on a very large sand-table, which I can use with the younger group for illustrations. It is perfectly clean work, and I have helped Miss Denison and her children to do the loveliest things with it. She makes geography lessons,–plains, hills, mountains, valleys, rivers, and lakes; or the children make a picture of the story they have just heard. I saw them do 'Over the River and through the Wood to Grandfather's House we go,' 'Washington's Winter Camp at Valley Forge,' and 'The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.' I have ever so many songs chosen, and those for November and December are almost learned without my notes. I shall have to work very hard to be ready twice a week!"

"Too hard, I fear," said Mrs. Bird anxiously.

"Oh, no; not a bit too hard! If the children are only interested, I shall not mind any amount of trouble. By the way, dear Mrs. Bird, you won't let the nurses or mothers stand in the doorways? You will please see that I am left quite alone with the children, won't you?"

"Certainly; no mothers shall be admitted, if they make you nervous; it is the children's hour. But after two or three months, when you have all become acquainted, and the children are accustomed to listening attentively, I almost hope you will allow a few nurses to come in and sit in the corners,–the ones who bring the youngest children, for example; it would be such a means of education to them. There 's another idea for you next year,–a nurses' class in story-telling."

"It would be rather nice, would n't it?–and I should be older then, and more experienced. I really think I could do it, if Miss Denison would help me by talks and instructions. She will be here next year. Oh, how the little plan broadens out!"

"And, Polly, you have chosen to pay for your circulars, and propose to buy your sand-table. This I agree to, if you insist upon it; though why I shouldn't help my godchild I cannot quite understand. But knowing you were so absorbed in other matters that you would forget the frivolities, and remembering that you have been wearing the same two dresses for months, I have ventured to get you some pretty gowns for the 'story hours,' and I want you to accept them for your Christmas present. They will serve for all your 'afternoons' and for our home dinners, as you will not be going out anywhere this winter."

"Oh, how kind you are, Mrs. Bird! You load me with benefits, and how can I ever repay you?"

"You do not have to repay them to me necessarily, my child; you can pass them over, as you will be constantly doing, to all these groups of children, day after day. I am a sort of stupid, rich old lady who serves as a source of supply. My chief brilliancy lies in devising original methods of getting rid of my surplus in all sorts of odd and delightful ways, left untried, for the most part, by other people. I 've been buying up splendid old trees in the outskirts of certain New England country towns,–trees that were in danger of being cut down for wood. Twenty-five to forty dollars buys a glorious tree, and it is safe for ever and ever to give shade to the tired traveler and beauty to the landscape. Each of my boys has his pet odd scheme for helping the world to 'go right.' Donald, for instance, puts stamps on the unstamped letters displayed in the Cambridge post-office, and sends them spinning on their way. He never receives the thanks of the careless writers, but he takes pleasure in making things straight. Paul writes me from Phillips Academy that this year he is sending the nine Ruggles children (a poor family of our acquaintance) to some sort of entertainment once every month. Hugh has just met a lovely girl who has induced him to help her maintain a boarding establishment for sick and deserted cats and dogs; and there we are!"

"But I 'm a young, strong girl, and I fear I 'm not so worthy an object of charity as a tree, an unstamped letter, an infant Ruggles, or a deserted cat! Still, I know the dresses will be lovely, and I had quite forgotten that I must be clothed in purple and fine linen for five months to come. It would have been one of my first thoughts last year, I am afraid; but lately this black dress has shut everything else from my sight."

"It was my thought that you should give up your black dress just for these occasions, dear, and wear something more cheerful for the children's sake. The dresses are very simple, for I 've heard you say you can never tell a story when you are 'dressed up,' but they will please you, I know. They will be brought home this evening, and you must slip them all on, and show yourself to us in each."

They would have pleased anybody, even a princess, Polly thought, as she stood before her bed that evening patting the four pretty new waists, and smoothing with childlike delight the folds of the four pretty skirts. It was such an odd sensation to have four dresses at a time!

They were of simple and inexpensive materials, as was appropriate; but Mrs. Bird's exquisite taste and feeling for what would suit Polly's personality made them more attractive than if they had been rich or expensive.

There was a white China silk, with belt and shoulder-knots of black velvet; a white Japanese crepe, with purple lilacs strewed over its surface, and frills of violet ribbon for ornament; a Christmas dress of soft, white camel's hair, with bands of white-fox fur round the slightly pointed neck and elbow-sleeves; and, last of all, a Quaker gown of silver-gray nun's cloth, with a surplice and full undersleeves of white crêpe-lisse.

"I 'm going to be vain, Mrs. Bird!" cried Polly, with compunction in her voice. "I 've never had a real beautiful, undyed, un-made-over dress in my whole life, and I shall never have strength of character to own four at once without being vain!"

This speech was uttered through the crack of the library door, outside of which Polly stood, gathering courage to walk in and be criticised.

"Think of your aspiring nose, Sapphira!" came from a voice within.

"Oh, are you there too, Edgar?"

"Of course I am, and so is Tom Mills. The news that you are going to 'try on' is all over the neighborhood! If you have cruelly fixed the age limit so that we can't possibly get in to the performances, we are going to attend all the dress rehearsals. Oh, ye little fishes! what a seraphic Sapphira! I wish Tony were here!"

She was pretty, there was no doubt about it, as she turned around like a revolving wax figure in a show-window, and assumed absurd fashion-plate attitudes; and pretty chiefly because of the sparkle, intelligence, sunny temper, and vitality that made her so magnetic.

Nobody could decide which was the loveliest dress, even when she had appeared in each one twice. In the lilac and white crepe, with a bunch of dark Parma violets thrust in her corsage, Uncle Jack called her a poem. Edgar asserted openly that in the Christmas toilet he should like to have her modeled in wax and put in a glass case on his table; but Mrs. Bird and Tom Mills voted for the Quaker gray, in which she made herself inexpressibly demure by braiding her hair in two discreet braids down her back.

"The dress rehearsal is over. Good-night all!" she said, as she took her candle. "I will say 'handsome is as handsome does' fifty times before I go to sleep, and perhaps–I only say perhaps–I may be used to my beautiful clothes in a week or two, so that I shall be my usual modest self again."

"Good-night, Polly," said the boys; "we will see you to-morrow."

"'Pauline,' if you please, not 'Polly.' I ceased to be Polly this morning when the circulars were posted. I am now Miss Pauline Oliver, story-teller by profession."

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CHILDREN'S HOUR: REPORTED IN A LETTER BY AN EYE-WITNESS

It was the last Monday in March, and I had come in from my country home to see if I could find my old school friend, Margaret Crosby, who is now Mrs. Donald Bird, and who is spending a few years in California.

The directory gave me her address, and I soon found myself on the corner of two beautiful streets and before a very large and elegant house. This did not surprise me, as I knew her husband to be a very wealthy man. There seemed to be various entrances, for the house stood with its side to the main street; but when I had at last selected a bell to ring, I became convinced that I had not, after all, gone to the front door. It was too late to retreat, however, and very soon the door was opened by a pretty maid-servant in a white cap and apron.

"You need n't have rung, 'm; they goes right in without ringing to-day," she said pleasantly.

"Can I see Mrs. Bird?" I asked.

"Well, 'm," she said hesitatingly, "she 's in Paradise."

"Lovely Margaret Crosby dead! How sudden it must have been," I thought, growing pale with the shock of the surprise; but the pretty maid, noticing that something had ruffled my equanimity, went on hastily:–

"Excuse me, 'm. I forgot you might be a stranger, but the nurses and mothers always comes to this door, and we 're all a bit flustered on account of its bein' Miss Pauline's last 'afternoon,' and the mothers call the music-room 'Paradise,' 'm, and Mr. John and the rest of us have took it up without thinkin' very much how it might sound to strangers."

"Oh, I see," I said mechanically, though I did n't see in the least; but although the complicated explanation threw very little light on general topics, it did have the saving grace of assuring me that Margaret Bird was living.

"Could you call her out for a few minutes?" I asked. "I am an old friend, and shall be disappointed not to see her."

"I 'm sorry, 'm, but I could n't possibly call her out; it would be as much as my place is worth. Her strict orders is that nobody once inside of Paradise door shall be called out."

"That does seem reasonable," I thought to myself.

"But," she continued, "Mrs. Bird told me to let young Mr. Noble up the stairs so 't he could peek in the door, and as you 're an old friend I hev n't no objections to your goin' up softly and peekin' in with him till Miss Pauline 's through,–it won't be long, 'm."

My curiosity was aroused by this time, and I came to the conclusion that "peekin' in the door" of Paradise with "young Mr. Noble" would be better than nothing; so up I went, like a thief in the night.

The room was at the head of the stairs, and one of the doors was open, and had a heavy portiere hanging across it. Behind this was young Mr. Noble, "peekin'" most greedily, together with a middle-aged gentleman not described by the voluble parlor maid. They did n't seem to notice me; they were otherwise occupied, or perhaps they thought me one of the nurses or mothers. I had heard the sound of a piano as I crossed the hall, but it was still now. I crept behind young Mr. Noble, and took a good "peek" into Paradise.

It was a very large apartment, one that looked as if it might have been built for a ball-room; at least, there was a wide, cushioned bench running around three sides of it, close to the wall. On one side, behind some black and gold Japanese screens, where they could hear and not be seen, sat a row of silent, capped and aproned nurse-maids and bonneted mammas. Mrs. Bird was among them, lovely and serene as an angel still, though she has had her troubles. There was a great fireplace in the room, but it was banked up with purple and white lilacs. There was a bowl of the same flowers on the grand piano, and a clump of bushes sketched in chalk on a blackboard. Just then a lovely young girl walked from the piano and took a low chair in front of the fireplace.

Before her there were grouped ever so many children, twenty-five or thirty, perhaps. The tots in the front rows were cosy and comfortable on piles of cushions, and the seven or eight year olds in the back row were in seats a little higher. Each child had a sprig of lilac in its hand. The young girl wore a soft white dress with lavender flowers scattered all over it, and a great bunch of the flowers in her belt.

She was a lovely creature! At least, I believe she was. I have an indistinct remembrance that her enemies (if she has any) might call her hair red; but I could n't stop looking at her long enough at the time to decide precisely what color it was. And I believe, now that several days have passed, that her nose turned up; but at the moment, whenever I tried to see just how much it wandered from the Grecian outline, her eyes dazzled me and I never found out.

As she seated herself in their midst, the children turned their faces expectantly toward her, like flowers toward the sun.

"You know it 's the last Monday, dears," she said; "and we 've had our good-by story."

"Tell it again! Sing it again!" came from two kilted adorers in the back row.

"Not to-day;" and she shook her head with a smile. "You know we always stop within the hour, and that is the reason we are always eager to come again; but this sprig of lilac that you all hold in your hands has something to tell; not a long story, just a piece of one for another good-by. I think when we go home, it we all press the flowers in heavy books, and open the books sometimes while we are away from each other this summer, that the sweet fragrance will come to us again, and the faded blossom will tell its own story to each one of us. And this is the story," she said, as she turned her spray of lilac in her fingers.

* * * * *

There was once a little lilac-bush that grew by a child's window. There was no garden there, only a tiny bit of ground with a few green things in it; and because there were no trees in the crowded streets, the birds perched on the lilac-bush to sing, and two of them even built a nest in it once, for want of something larger.

It had been a very busy lilac-bush all its life: drinking up moisture from the earth and making it into sap; adding each year a tiny bit of wood to its slender trunk; filling out its leaf-buds; making its leaves larger and larger; and then–oh, happy, happy time!–hanging purple flowers here and there among its branches.

It always felt glad of its hard work when Hester came to gather some of its flowers just before Easter Sunday. For one spray went to the table where Hester and her mother ate together; one to Hester's teacher; one to the gray stone church around the corner, and one to a little lame girl who sat, and sat, quite still, day after day, by the window of the next house.

But one year–this very last year, children–the lilac-bush grew tired of being good and working hard; and the more it thought about it, the sadder and sorrier and more discouraged it grew. The winter had been dark and rainy; the ground was so wet that its roots felt slippery and uncomfortable; there was some disagreeable moss growing on its smooth branches; the sun almost never shone; the birds came but seldom; and at last the lilac-bush said, "I will give up: I am not going to bud or bloom or do a single thing for Easter this year! I don't care if my trunk does n't grow, nor my buds swell, nor my leaves grow larger! If Hester wants her room shaded, she can pull the curtain down; and the lame girl can"–do without, it was going to say, but it did n't dare–oh, it did n't dare to think of the poor little lame girl without any comforting flowers; so it stopped short and hung its head.

Six or eight weeks ago Hester and her mother went out one morning to see the lilac-bush.

"It does n't look at all as it ought," said Hester, shaking her head sadly. "The buds are very few, and they are all shrunken. See how limp and flabby the stems of the leaves look!"

"Perhaps it is dead," said Hester's mother, "or perhaps it is too old to bloom."

"I like that!" thought the lilac-bush.

"I 'm not dead and I 'm not dying, though I 'd just as lief die as to keep on working in this dark, damp, unpleasant winter, or spring, or whatever they call it; and as for being past blooming, I would just like to show her, if it was n't so much trouble! How old does she think I am, I wonder? There is n't a thing in this part of the city that is over ten years old, and I was n't planted first, by any means!"

And then Hester said, "My darling, darling lilac-bush! Easter won't be Easter without it; and lame Jenny leans out of her window every day as I come from school, and asks, 'Is the lilac budding?'"

"Oh dear!" sighed the little bush. "I wish she would n't talk that way; it makes me so nervous to have Jenny asking questions about me! It starts my sap circulating, and I shall grow in spite of me!"

"Let us see what we can do to help it," said Hester's mother. "Take your trowel and dig round the roots first."

"They 'll find a moist and sticky place and be better able to sympathize with me," thought the lilac.

"Then put in some new earth, the richest you can get, and we 'll snip off all the withered leaves and dry twigs, and see if it won't take a new start."

"I shall have to, I believe, whether I like it or not, if they make such a fuss about me!" thought the lilac-bush. "It seems a pity if a thing can't stop growing and be let alone and die if it wants to!"

But though it grumbled a trifle at first, it felt so much better after Hester and her mother had spent the afternoon caring for it, that it began to grow a little just out of gratitude,–and what do you think happened?

"George Washington came and chopped it down with his little hatchet," said an eager person in front.

"The lame girl came to look at it," sang out a small chap in the back row.

No, (the young girl answered, with an irrepressible smile), it was a cherry-tree that George Washington chopped, Lucy; and I told you, Horatio, that the poor lame girl could n't walk a step. But the sun began to shine,–that is the first thing that happened. Day after day the sun shone, because everything seems to help the people and the things that help themselves. The rich earth gave everything it had to give for sap, and the warm air dried up the ugly moss that spoiled the beauty of its trunk.

Then the lilac-bush was glad again, and it could hardly grow fast enough, because it knew it would be behind time, at any rate; for of course it could n't stand still, grumbling and doing nothing for weeks, and get its work done as soon as the other plants. But it made sap all clay long, and the buds grew into tiny leaves, and the leaves into larger ones, and then it began to group its flower-buds among the branches. By this time it was the week before Easter, and it fairly sat up nights to work.

Hester knew that it was going to be more beautiful than it ever was in its life before (that was because it had never tried so hard, though of course Hester could n't know that), but she was only afraid that it would n't bloom soon enough, it was so very late this spring.

But the very morning before Easter Sunday, Hester turned in her sleep and dreamed that a sweet, sweet fragrance was stealing in at her open window. A few minutes later she ran across her room, and lo! every cluster of buds on the lilac-bush had opened into purple flowers, and they were waving in the morning sunshine as if to say, "We are ready, Hester! We are ready, after all!"

And one spray was pinned in the teacher's dress,–it was shabby and black,–and she was glad of the flower because it reminded her of home.

And one spray stood in a vase on Hester's dining-table. There was never very much dinner in Hester's house, but they did not care that day, because the lilac was so beautiful.

One bunch lay on the table in the church, and one, the loveliest of all, stood in a cup of water on the lame girl's window-sill; and when she went to bed that night she moved it to the table beside her head, and put her thin hand out to touch it in the dark, and went to sleep smiling.

And each of the lilac flowers was glad that the bush had bloomed.

* * * * *

The children drew a deep breath. They smoothed their flower-sprays gently, and one pale boy held his up to his cheek as if it had been a living thing.

"Tell it again," cried the tomboy.

"Is it true?" asked the boy in kilts.

"I think it is," said the girl gently. "Of course, Tommy, the flowers never tell us their secrets in words; but I have watched that lilac-bush all through the winter and spring, and these are the very blossoms you are holding to-day. It seems true, doesn't it?"

"Yes," they said thoughtfully.

"Shall you press yours, Miss Polly, and will it tell you a story, too, when you look at it?" asked one little tot as they all crowded about her for a good-by kiss.

Miss Polly caught her up in her arms, and I saw her take the child's apron and wipe away a tear as she said, "Yes, dear, it will tell me a story, too,–a long, sad, sweet, helpful story!"