Gift Dutiful! The Gift that Didn't
Come! _Heigho_! Manger and Toy-Shop,--Miracle and Mirth,--

"Glisten and Tears,
LAUGH at the years!"

_That's_ Christmas!

Flame Nourice certainly was willing to laugh at the years. Eighteen
usually is!

Waking at Dawn two single thoughts consumed her,--the Lay Reader, and
the humpiest of the express packages downstairs.

The Lay Reader's name was Bertrand. "Bertrand the Lay Reader," Flame
always called him. The rest of the Parish called him Mr. Laurello.

It was the thought of Bertrand the Lay Reader that made Flame laugh
the most.

"As long as I've promised most faithfully not to see him," she
laughed, "how can I possibly go to church? For the first Christmas in
my life," she laughed, "I won't have to go to church!"

With this obligation so cheerfully canceled, the exploration of the
humpiest express package loomed definitely as the next task on the
horizon.

Hoping for a fur coat from her Father, fearing for a set of
encyclopedias from her Mother, she tore back the wrappings with eager
hands only to find,--all-astonished, and half a-scream,--a gay, gauzy
layer of animal masks nosing interrogatively up at her. Less practical
surely than the fur coat,--more amusing, certainly, than
encyclopedias,--the funny "false faces" grinned up at her with a
curiously excitative audacity. Where from?--No identifying card! What
for? No conceivable clew!--Unless perhaps just on general principles a
donation for the Sunday School Christmas Tree?--But there wasn't going
to be any tree! Tentatively she reached into the box and touched the
fiercely striped face of a tiger, the fantastically exaggerated beak
of a red and green parrot. "U-m-m-m," mused Flame. "Whatever in the
world shall I do with them?" Then quite abruptly she sank back on her
heels and began to laugh and laugh and laugh. Even the Lay Reader had
not received such a laughing But even to herself she did not say just
what she was laughing at. It was a time for deeds, it would seem, and
not for words.

Certainly the morning was very full of deeds!

There was, of course, a present from her Mother to be opened,--warm,
woolly stockings and things like that. But no one was ever swerved
from an original purpose by trying on warm, woolly stockings. And from
her Father there was the most absurd little box no bigger than your
nose marked, "For a week in New York," and stuffed to the brim with
the sweetest bright green dollar