“I don’t know; but I’ve always thought of there being twelve. I would like as many as possible, and one could hardly remember the names of more. I don’t believe that there are more than twelve names that I care for. But with twelve we should have a birthday-party once a month, one for each month. Did you have birthday-cakes in India, Gavan, with candles for your age?” “Yes; my mother always had a cake for my birthday.” His voice, in speaking of his mother, seemed always to steel itself, as though to speak of her hurt him. Eppie had felt this directly, and now, regretting her allusion, said, “When is your birthday, Gavan?” thinking of a cake with fifteen candles--how splendid!--to hear disappointingly that the day was not till January, when he would have been gone--long since. On another time, as they walked up the hillside, beside the burn, she said: “I thought you were not going to like us at all, when you first came.” “I was horribly afraid of you all,” said Gavan. “Everything was so strange to me.” “No, you weren’t afraid,” Eppie objected--“not really afraid. I don’t believe you are ever really afraid of people.” “Yes, I am--afraid of displeasing them, trying them in some way. And I was miserable on that day, too, with anxiety about my poor monkey. I’m sorry I seemed horrid.” “Not a bit horrid, only very cold and polite.” “I didn’t realize things much. You see--“ Gavan paused. “Yes, of course; you weren’t thinking of us. You were thinking of--what you had left.” “Yes,” he assented, not looking at her. He went on presently, turning his eyes on her and smiling over a sort of alarm at his own advance to personalities: “_You_ weren’t horrid. I remember that I thought you the nicest little girl I had ever seen. You were all that I did see--standing there in the sun, with a white dress like Alice in Wonderland and with your hair all shining. I never saw hair like it.” “Do you think it pretty?” Eppie asked eagerly. “Very--all those rivers of gold in the dark.” “I _am_ glad. I think it pretty, too, and nurse is afraid that I am vain, I think, for she always takes great pains to tell me that it is striped hair and that she hopes it may grow to be the same color when I’m older.” “_I_ hope not,” said Gavan, gallantly. Many long afternoons were spent in the garden, where Eppie initiated him into the sanctities of the summer-house. Gavan’s sense of other people’s sanctities was wonderful. She would never have dreamed of showing her dolls to her cousins; but she brought them out and displayed them to Gavan, and he looked at them and their appurtenances carefully, gravely assenting to all the characteristics that she pointed out. So kind, indeed, so comprehending was he, that Eppie, a delightful project dawning in her mind, asked: “Have you ever played with dolls? I mean when you were very little?” “No, never.”