nnounced Mrs. Fosdick.

"Oh, those things! they're not of the slightest importance. I didn't
know just how many youngsters you had, and the shops over there are
simply irresistible."

She ladled herself a glass of eggnog composedly, as though wholly
unconscious that the withdrawal of the noncombatants had cleared the
field for battle.

The sisters, having sipped Amzi's Christmas tipple apprehensively, noted
that this was Lois's second glass.

"Well, what are you all doing with yourselves?" she asked, sinking into
a chair. "Kate, I believe I look more like you than either Fanny or Jo.
I think you are taller than I am, but we have the same complexion. My
face is all chopped up from the sea; it was the worst crossing I ever
made, but I only missed one day on deck. The captain is the best of
fellows and kept an officer trailing me to see that I didn't tumble
overboard."

She glanced at Hastings as though he were more likely than the others to
respond to observations on sea travel. He declared that he always
preferred winter crossings; it was the only way to feel the power and
majesty of the sea.

"I always feel so," said Lois.

Amzi fidgeted about the room, wishing they would all go.

"Lois," said Mrs. Waterman, gathering herself together, "you will
understand, of course, that we don't mean to be unkind, but we feel that
we have a right--that it is only proper and just for us to know why you
have come back in this way, without giving us any warning, so that we
might prepare ourselves--"

Lois's brows lifted slightly; the slim fingers of her right hand clasped
the gold band by which the blue enameled watch was attached to her left
wrist. She tilted her head to one side, as though mildly curious as to
the drift of her sister's remark.

"Oh, you mustn't mind that at all! I should have been sorry if you had
gone to any trouble for me. Dropping in this way, what should one
expect?" A pretty shrug expressed her feeling that nothing at all had
been expected. "Jo, do you remember that time you were running from
Captain Joshua Wilson's cow, in his pasture over there beyond the
college, and you fell over a fence and cracked a tooth, and how you
bawled about it? And I suppose that gold tooth is a memento of the
occasion. We used to be the maddest of harum-scarums in those days!"

It was not wholly kind, perhaps, for a woman whose white, even teeth
were undisfigured by fillings thus to direct attention to the marks of
th