lver hen. They searched with no success till the day before
Christmas. Then they thought they would ask Dame Louisa, who had the
reputation of being quite a wise woman, if she knew of any more likely
places in which they could hunt.

The twelve scholars walked two by two up to Dame Louisa's front door,
and knocked. They were very quiet and spoke only in whispers because
they knew Dame Louisa was nervous, and did not like children very
well. Indeed it was a great cross to her that she lived so near the
school, for the scholars when out in their own yard never thought
about her nervousness, and made a deal of noise. Then too she could
hear every time they spelled or said the multiplication-table, or
bounded the countries of Africa, and it was very trying. To-day in
spite of their efforts to be quiet they awoke her from a nap, and she
came to the door, with her front-piece and cap on one side, and her
spectacles over her eyebrows, very much out of humor.

[Illustration: TWO BY TWO.]

"I don't know where you'll find the hen," said she peevishly, "unless
you go to the White Woods for it."

"Thank you, ma'am," said the children with curtesies, and they all
turned and went down the path between the dead Christmas-trees.

Dame Louisa had no idea that they would go to the White Woods. She had
said it quite at random, although she was so vexed in being disturbed
in her nap that she wished for a moment that they would. She stood in
her front door and looked at her dead Christmas-trees, and that
always made her feel crosser, and she had not at any time a pleasant
disposition. Indeed, it was rumored among the towns-people that that
had blasted her Christmas-trees, that Dame Louisa's scolding, fretting
voice had floated out to them, and smote their delicate twigs like a
bitter frost and made them turn yellow; for the real Christmas-tree is
not very hardy.

No one else in the village, probably no one else in the county, owned
any such tree, alive or dead. Dame Louisa's husband, who had been
a sea-captain, had brought them from foreign parts. They were mere
little twigs when they planted them on the first day of January, but
they were full-grown and loaded with fruit by the next Christmas-day.
Every Christmas they were cut down and sold, but they always grew
again to their full height, in a year's time. They were not, it is
true, the regulation Christmas-tree. That is they were not loaded with
different and suitable gifts for ev