And it was a day worth owning; the midsummer sunshine, pouring gold through his window, came from a cool sky, and a breeze moved pleasantly in his hair as he leaned from the sill to watch the tribe of clattering blackbirds take wing, following their leader from the trees in the yard to the day's work in the open country.

The blackbirds were his, as the sunshine and the breeze were his, for they all belonged to the day which was his birthday and therefore most surely his.

Pride suffused him: he was twelve! His father and his mother and Margaret seemed to understand the difference between to-day and yesterday.

They were at the table when he descended, and they gave him a greeting which of itself marked the milestone.

Habitually, his entrance into a room where his elders sat brought a cloud of apprehension: they were prone to look up in pathetic expectancy, as if their thought was, "What new awfulness is he going to start NOW ?" But this morning they laughed; his mother rose and kissed him twelve times, so did Margaret; and his father shouted, "Well, well! How's the MAN ?" Then his mother gave him a Bible and "The Vicar of Wakefield"; Margaret gave him a pair of silver-mounted hair brushes; and his father gave him a "Pocket Atlas" and a small compass.
"And now, Penrod," said his mother, after breakfast, "I'm going to take you out in the country to pay your birthday respects to Aunt Sarah Crim." Aunt Sarah Crim, Penrod's great-aunt, was his oldest living relative.
She was ninety, and when Mrs.Schofield and Penrod alighted from a carriage at her gate they found her digging with a spade in the garden.
"I'm glad you brought him," she said, desisting from labour.