he week before Christmas. The
Sunday-school room was all dressed with greens, and tables arranged over
the tops of the seats with long boards, covered with white cloths. And
oh, the lovely articles! Everything it seemed that fingers could make,
useful or ornamental, from handsomely dressed dolls to pincushions, from
white aprons with lace and ribbon bows on the dainty pockets down to
unromantic holders. Everybody laughed and chatted and were as gay as gay
could be.

In the back room that was rented out for a day school--indeed, the
little girl had come quite near being sent here--there were tables for
refreshments. The coffee and tea had a delightful fragrance, and the
different dishes looked wonderfully tempting.

It was Hanny's first fair, but people didn't expect to take children out
everywhere then, or indeed to go themselves. There was more home life,
real family life. Her father was her escort, and her mother had said:
"Now don't make the child sick by feeding her all kinds of trash, or she
can't go out again this winter." So you see they had to be careful. But
they had some delightful cake and cream, and he bought her a pound of
candy tied up in a pretty box, and the loveliest little work-basket with
a row of blue silk pockets around the inside.

Katy Rhodes was waiting at a table with her mother, but she found an
opportunity to whisper to Hanny "that her lace had sold the very first
thing, and there had been such a call for it she just wished they had
had a hundred yards."

That pleased the child very much.

"It was like a store," said Hanny to her mother; "only everybody seemed
to know everybody, and there were all kinds of things. So many people
came for their suppers they must have made lots of money. And I'm as
tired as I can be, only it _was_ beautiful."

Martha's church was to have their Christmas Sunday-school anniversary,
and Charles Reed was to sing a solo with a chorus of four voices. The
Deans and half the people in the street went. Margaret and Dr. Hoffman,
and this time John and Ben took the little girl. Mother had been up at
Steve's all day.

There was a large platform at the end of the church, and crowds of
pretty children dressed in white, ranged in tiers one above another.
After a prayer and singing by the congregation the real exercises began.
The body of children sang some beautiful hymns, then there were several
spirited dialogues, and separate pieces, very well rendered indeed. When