The dinner-wagon which we saw depart from “Prices” had, on its second trip, deposited a tray and a small brown paper parcel at Dr. Richards’s. The tray bore several viands destined to furnish forth a portion of Pinkie’s birthday feast; for Alice often found it convenient to order dishes whose preparation required much time or pains, though not marching with the times to the extent of a whole dinner. The parcel was addressed in Louis’ best hand—which was a very good hand indeed—to “Miss Rosalie Randolph.” It was a very small parcel indeed, so small that Miss Virginia Dare, Pinkie’s “best friend” and desk-mate, who had come to dine with her, clasped her hands with an instant and disinterested exultation. “Jewelry, Pinkie!” she exclaimed; “maybe a complete _parure_! from your father!” Pinkie shook her head with its soft short curls of dark brown. She was exceedingly pretty, as brown as a gypsy, as graceful as a fairy, and as full of mischief as—but here I pause. No hackneyed kitten could supply a simile for Pinkie’s mischief. There was _nothing_, as her long-suffering teachers, pastors, and masters were accustomed to say with emphasis,—nothing, in the way of mischief, that that girl was not up to. But, as they were accustomed to add, “her heart was in the right place, after all, and there was no great harm in her. With good training she would make a fine woman yet.” “It’s not the governor’s fist,” said Pinkie, with a shake of her dark head, while the color deepened in her bright cheeks and crept upward to her pretty blue-veined temples. “And as for _parures_, Virgie, you don’t know the old man. He won’t let me wear even a finger-ring, when he knows it. Jeffersonian simplicity is his line.” “Oh! never mind what _his_ line is; the line around that box is what I’m thinking of. Pinks! are you _never_ going to open it?” “How do you know it’s a box?” asked Pinkie leisurely. “How do I know that my nose is a Roman and yours a snub? by the shape, of course. Rosalie, Rosalia! I die, I perish, I positively gasp with curiosity. Will you slay me here in cold blood, before your very eyes?” “I wouldn’t mind a bit, if—if I wasn’t so very curious myself,” said Pinkie, laughing. “But mind, now, Virgie, whatever it is, mum’s the word. There’s a small suspicion rising on my mind”— “The size of a man’s hand?” “No, boy’s hand. And if you breathe a whisper of it, you know”— “Tortures—not to mention wild horses—shall never drag the secret from my lips,” said Virgie briefly, whereupon Pinkie whipped off the wrapper, and discovered the daintiest little box that can be imagined. It was made of fragrant cedar—Louis had chosen the wood himself—and lined with satin; there were silver hinges and a silver padlock, and within there lay upon the crimson lining the smallest pair of creamy kid slippers that any mortal maiden, save Cinderella herself, ever wore.