“That depends. I don't relish having my Christmas presents given away. I like to have them kept forever in little girls' bureau drawers, all wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I'll change my mind. What is it you want?” “I need a wedding ring dreadfully,” said Rebecca, “but it's a sacred secret.” Adam Ladd's eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself with pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, a person of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as this child? Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that made him so delightful to young people. “I thought it was perfectly understood between us,” he said, “that if you could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that I was to ride up to the brick house on my snow white”-- “Coal black,” corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warning finger. “Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white finger, draw you up behind me on my pillion”-- “And Emma Jane, too,” Rebecca interrupted. “I think I didn't mention Emma Jane,” argued Mr. Aladdin. “Three on a pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of a prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle in the forest.” “Emma Jane never leaps, and she'd be afraid of a prancing chestnut,” objected Rebecca. “Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now, without any explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which shows plainly that you are planning to ride off on a snow white--I mean coal black--charger with somebody else.” Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaic world no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the fool according to his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddle but Mr. Aladdin. “The ring isn't for _me!_” she explained carefully. “You know very well that Emma Jane nor I can't be married till we're through Quackenbos's Grammar, Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails and run a sewing machine. The ring is for a friend.” “Why doesn't the groom give it to his bride himself?” “Because he's poor and kind of thoughtless, and anyway she isn't a bride any more; she has three step and three other kind of children.” Adam Ladd put the whip back in the socket thoughtfully, and then stooped to tuck in the rug over Rebecca's feet and his own. When he raised his head again he asked: “Why not tell me a little more, Rebecca? I'm safe!”