"It's really quite dreadful to have a girl like that come to spend the whole summer with one," she said to Georgie. "She hasn't a bit of style, and her clothes are so queer and old-timey; and she's always lived up on that horrid farm, and hasn't an idea beyond it. Everything surprises her so, and she makes such a fuss over it. You should have heard her yesterday when we were out walking; she said the Cliffs had been there always, and some of the fashionable people had only just come." "What _did_ she mean?" "I'm sure I don't know. She says the queerest things. And she looks so funny and so different from the other girls; and of course everybody will know that she is our cousin." "Mamma has ordered her some dresses from Hollander's," observed Georgie; "and that was a real pretty hat that came home last night." "I don't care. They won't look like anything when she puts them on." "Gertrude Gray, I think it's real mean to talk so about your own cousin," cried Marian, who, with the instinct of a true "little pitcher," had heard every word. "It isn't Cannie's fault that she has always lived on a farm. She didn't have anywhere else to live. Very likely she would have preferred Paris," with fine scorn, "or to go to boarding-school in Dresden, as you and Georgie did, if anybody had given her the choice. She's real nice, I think, and now that her hair is put up, she's pretty too,--a great deal prettier than some of the girls you like. I'm going down now to sit with her. You and Georgie don't treat her kindly a bit. You leave her all alone, and very likely she's homesick at this moment; but I shall be nice to her, whatever you do." Whereupon Miss Marian marched out of the room with her nose in the air, and devoted herself to Candace for the rest of that day, much to the lonely little visitor's contentment. They grew quite at home with each other over "Evangeline." Birthday books had just come into fashion. Somebody had given Marian one; and she now brought it and asked Candace to write in it. "June 17," she said, as Cannie sought out the right page; "why, that is next Saturday." "So it is, though I shouldn't have remembered it if it hadn't been for your book." "Why, how funny!" cried Marian, opening her eyes wide. "Don't you keep your birthdays?" "Keep them?" repeated Candace, in a tone of perplexity. "Yes; keep--celebrate them? Don't people ever give you presents? Didn't you ever have a cake?"--her voice increasing in dismay, as Candace in answer to each question shook her head. "Cake--on my birthday, you mean? No, I don't think I ever did. Aunt Myra doesn't believe in cake. She says she liked it when she was young; but since she was converted to cracked wheat and oatmeal at the age of thirty-three, she has hardly ever touched it. We never had any at North Tolland, except gingerbread sometimes."