Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/267

Rh Just at the end of the entertainment, when those appointed to the task were getting ready to collect lists from the guessers, count up correct entries after the numbers, and award the prizes for the three best lists, Nina Bell, the baby, still wide awake when the two older little Bells were getting muffled by sleepiness, saw her chance and escaped once more, this time successfully. She toddled along, her covetous eyes on the swinging lanterns quite beyond the reach of her hands, but not of her ambition.

“Everything comes to him who waits” is more or less true. Small Nina had been waiting all the evening to see one of those luminous bright things close by. As she went wistfully along the path now, a cord from which a line of the lanterns was suspended dropped from the farther branch to which it had been attached and fell at her feet.

Here they were, not one but eight glowing, queer flowers thrown by kind fairies to her fingers! With a crow of joy Nina stooped clumsily—for stooping still involved for her a drop on to her hands rather than a bending of her body—and began to examine her prize. They were as satisfactory, seen at close range, as they had been at a distance. Suddenly, however, as she