. "We're ready to start now." She saw
with a sigh of relief that her mother was bringing her coat toward her,
so she would not have to climb the stairs for it. She was tired,
dreadfully tired, she admitted to herself. But it had been such a happy
day it was worth the fatigue.

As she drove homeward in the sleigh, she slipped her hand out of her
muff, and turned it in the moonlight to watch the sparkle of the new
ring. She wondered if the two girls who had worn it in turn before her
had had half as happy a fifteenth Christmas as she.

CHAPTER X.

THE DUNGEON OF DISAPPOINTMENT

IT was nearly noon when Lloyd wakened next morning. Her head ached, and
she wondered dully how anybody could feel lively enough to sing as Aunt
Cindy was doing, somewhere back in the servants' quarters. The sound of
a squeaking wheelbarrow had wakened her. Alec was trundling it around
the house, with the parrot perched on it. The parrot loved to ride, and
its silly laugh at every jolt of the squeaking barrow usually amused
Lloyd, but to-day its harsh chatter annoyed her.

"Oh, deah!" she groaned, sitting up in bed and yawning. "I feel as if I
could sleep for a week. I wouldn't get up at all if it wasn't for Katie
Mallard's pah'ty. I hate this day-aftah-Christmas feeling, as if the
bottom had dropped out of everything."

She dressed slowly and went down-stairs. "Where's mothah, Mom Beck?" she
asked, pausing in the dining-room door. The old coloured woman was
arranging flowers for the lunch-table.

"She's done gone ovah to Rollington, honey, with the old Cun'l. Walkah's
mothah is sick, and sent for 'em. I'm lookin' for 'em to come home any
minute now. Come right along in, honey. I've kep' yoah breakfus' good
and hot."

"I don't want anything to eat. I'm not hungry now. I'd rathah wait till
lunch. Where's Betty, Mom Beck?"

"Now listen to that!" ejaculated the old woman, sharply. "Don't you
remembah? She went off on the early train this mawning to that place you
all calls the Cuckoo's Nest. I packed her satchel befoah daylight."

"I had forgotten she was going," exclaimed Lloyd, turning to the window
with a discontented expression, which only the snowbirds on the lawn
could see. She had come down-stairs expecting to talk over all the
happenings of the previous day with Betty, and to find her gone gave her
a vague sense of injury. She knew the feeling was unreasonable, but she
could not shake it off.

The flash of the new ring gav