What they could not discover after so much labour and thought, so many arduous days and sleepless nights, Mademoiselle Suzanne knew in a moment.
Her papa had taken her to the Louvre, where he had business. Mademoiselle Suzanne looked wonderingly at the antiques, and seeing gods with missing arms and legs and heads, she said to herself: “Ah! yes, these are the grown-up gentlemen’s dolls; I see now gentlemen break their dollies the same as little girls do.” But when she came to the two maidens who, each of them, hold a flower, she threw them a kiss, because they looked so charming. Then her father asked her: “Why do they give each other a flower?” And Suzanne answered at once: “To wish each other a happy birthday.” Then, after thinking a moment, she added:
“They have the same birthday; they are both alike and they are offering each other the same flower. Girl friends should always have the same birthday.”
Now Suzanne is far away from the Louvre and the old Greek marbles; she is in the kingdom of the birds and the flowers. She is spending the bright spring days in the meadows under shelter of the woods. She plays in the grass, and that is the sweetest sort of play. She remembers to-day is her little friend Jacqueline’s birthday; and so she is going to pick flowers which she will give Jacqueline, and kiss her.