"You always say I shouldn't hear either a burglar or an earthquake," she declared, "and Toby was very nearly as bad. You naughty, precious puss! What do you mean by coming and scaring my Sylvia? There, you didn't do it on purpose, did you? Come into my bed for a minute before I get up. You're the sweetest, softest darling that ever was." Sylvia's birthday was on the nineteenth of November, and to her great delight it happened this year on a Saturday. Miss Kaye, who tried to make school seem as much like home as possible, was indulgent regarding such anniversaries, and permitted many small privileges to the fortunate owner of a birthday. Sylvia was allowed to choose the dinner, an important decision, over which she lingered so long that the mistress nearly lost patience. "Of course you must not order turkey and ice cream," said Miss Kaye; "it must be two of our ordinary dishes, only you may have which you like. Be quick, for Cook is waiting to know." After some hesitation Sylvia decided on hotpot and fig pudding. "I like the potatoes on the top of the hotpot," she explained to Linda, "especially when they're crisp and brown, and the fig pudding always has delicious sweet sauce, and Miss Kaye lets one take plenty of sugar with it. Jessie Ellis chose boiled mutton and corn-flour blancmange with jam on her birthday. I don't think that was nice at all." The girls in her class subscribed, and gave Sylvia a birthday book as their joint present, containing poetical quotations from Shakespeare for each day, and one or two pretty illustrations of Perdita, Portia, and other heroines. She was charmed with such a remembrance and asked them all to write their names in it. "We chose a fawn cover," said Nina, "because topaz is the birthday stone for November. Marian wanted a green one, but I said that wouldn't do. It's a funny thing, but people always say your month stone matches your eyes. I never can quite decide whether yours are brown or dark grey, but I'm sure a necklace of topaz would suit you beautifully, and you'll have to wear one when you're grown up. By the by, on which day of the week were you born?" "On a Friday," said Sylvia; "but why do you want to know?" "Then you're loving and giving." "What do you mean?" "Oh, don't you know the old rhyme? 'Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednesday's child is a child of woe, Thursday's child has far to go, Friday's child is loving and giving, Saturday's child must work for its living, But the child that is born on the Sabbath day Is good and truthful and happy and gay.'" "Where do you learn all these things?" asked Sylvia. "From our old cook. She's a daleswoman, and she can tell what it means when the candle gutters or the clock stops, or a swarm of bees comes, or you see magpies, or your ear burns, or you sneeze, and what's lucky to do and what's unlucky."