"A bloodstone will do more for you any day than an agate." Taking this as a challenge, all sorts of feats were attempted to prove the superior virtues of each girl's birthstone charm, so that the performance ended in a gale of romping and laughter.

Then at the last, to the tune of "They kept the pig in the parlour and that was Irish too," Mary was gravely presented on behalf of the sorority with the gift it had chosen for her.
"For your dowry," it was marked.

It was a toy savings-bank in the form of a china pig, with a slit in its back, into which each member dropped seventeen pennies, as they sang in jolly chorus, "Because it's your seventeenth birthday, March seventeen shall be mirth-day.
Oh, may you long on the earth stay, With pence a-plenty too." "That's an example in mental arithmetic," cried A.O.

"Quick, Mary! Tell us how much your dowry amounts to.

Seventeen times sixteen--" But Mary was occupied with a discovery she had just made.