THE FREYS' CHRISTMAS PARTY

There was a great sensation in the old Coppenole house three days before
Christmas. The Freys, who lived on the third floor, were going to give a
Christmas dinner party, and all the other tenants were invited.

Such a thing had never happened before, and, as Miss Penny told her
canary-birds while she filled their seed-cups, it was "like a clap of
thunder out of a clear sky."

The Frey family, consisting of a widow and her brood of half a dozen
children, were as poor as any of the tenants in the old building, for
wasn't the mother earning a scant living as a beginner in newspaper
work? Didn't the Frey children do every bit of the house-work, not to
mention little outside industries by which the older ones earned small
incomes? Didn't Meg send soft gingerbread to the Christian Woman's
Exchange for sale twice a week, and Ethel find time, with all her
studies, to paint butterflies on Swiss aprons for fairs or fetes?

Didn't everybody know that Conrad, now but thirteen, was a regular
solicitor for orders for Christmas-trees, palmetto palms, and gray moss
from the woods for decorative uses on holiday occasions?

The idea of people in such circumstances as these giving dinner parties!
It was almost incredible; but it was true, for tiny notes of invitation
tied with rose-colored ribbons had been flying over the building all the
afternoon. The Frey twins, Felix and Felicie, both barefoot, had carried
one to each door.

They were written with gold ink on pink paper. A water-colored butterfly
was poised in midair somewhere on each one, and at the left lower end
were the mysterious letters "R.S.V.P."

The old Professor who lived in the room next the Frey kitchen got one,
and Miss Penny, who occupied the room beyond. So did Mademoiselle
Guyosa, who made paper flowers, and the mysterious little woman of the
last, worst room in the house--a tiny figure whose face none of her
neighbors had ever seen, but who had given her name to the baker and
milkman as "Mamzelle St. John."

And there were others. Madame Coraline, the fortune-teller, who rented
the hall room on the second floor, was perhaps more surprised at her
invitation than any of the rest. No one ever asked her anywhere. Even
the veiled ladies who sometimes visited her darkened chamber always
tiptoed up the steps as if they were half ashamed of going there.

The twins had a time getting her to come to the door to receive the
invit