y. Her aunts had charged her not to swing it, and "get the
dinner in a mess."

Young Lucretia's face, with very pink cheeks, and smooth lines of red
hair over the temples, looked gayly and honestly out of the hood and
nubia. Here and there along the road were sprigs of evergreen and
ground-pine and hemlock. Lucretia glanced a trifle soberly at them. She
was nearly in sight of the school-house when she reached Alma Ford's
house, and Alma came out and joined her. Alma was trim and pretty in her
fur-bordered winter coat and her scarlet hood.

"Hullo, Lucretia!" said Alma.

"Hullo!" responded Lucretia. Then the two little girls trotted on
together: the evergreen sprigs were growing thicker. "Did you go?" asked
Lucretia, looking down at them.

"Yes; we went way up to the cross-roads. They wouldn't let you go, would
they?"

"No," said Lucretia, smiling broadly.

"I think it was _mean_," said Alma.

"They said they didn't approve of it," said Lucretia, in a serious
voice, which seemed like an echo of some one else's.

When they got to the school-house it took her a long time to unroll
herself from her many wrappings. When at last she emerged there was not
another child there who was dressed quite after her fashion. Seen from
behind, she looked like a small, tightly-built old lady. Her little
basque, cut after her aunt's own pattern, rigorously whaleboned, with
long straight seams, opened in front; she wore a dimity ruffle, a square
blue bow to fasten it, and a brown gingham apron. Her sandy hair was
parted rigorously in the middle, brought over her temples in two smooth
streaky scallops, and braided behind in two tight tails, fastened by a
green bow. Young Lucretia was a homely little girl, although her face
was always radiantly good-humored. She was a good scholar, too, and
could spell and add sums as fast as anybody in the school.

In the entry, where she took off her things, there was a great litter of
evergreen and hemlock; in the farthest corner, lopped pitifully over on
its side, was a fine hemlock-tree. Lucretia looked at it, and her
smiling face grew a little serious.

"That the Christmas-tree out there?" she said to the other girls when
she went into the school-room. The teacher had not come, and there was
such an uproar and jubilation that she could hardly make herself heard.
She had to poke one of the girls two or three times before she could get
her question answered.

"What did you say, Lucretia Raym