will, if _you_ think you can," asserted Jeff. "You're up to it,
aren't you? You needn't do a thing. Six of the crowd are going to give a
little play. I'll get the load started home early, and we'll come back
flying. Be here by midnight at the latest. It'll do you good, I know it
will."

"O Mrs. Churchill!" breathed Evelyn, as Charlotte appeared from the
hall.

"O Evelyn Lee!" answered Charlotte, smiling back at the eager face.
"Yes, I heard most of it, Jeff, for I was coming down-stairs, and you
weren't exactly whispering. It's an enticing plan, isn't it?"

"Of course it is. And it's magnificent weather for the affair. Not cold
a bit and no wind; moonlight due if no clouds come up. Evelyn can't get
cold. I'll keep her done up to the tip of her nose, and be so devoted
nobody else will have a chance to worry her. Say she may go. Don't you
see the disappointment would be worse for her than the trip?"

"You artful pleader, I'm not sure but it would. If Doctor Churchill
agrees, Evelyn, I'll let you try it. On one condition, Jeff--that you
really do get back by midnight. For a girl who has been put to bed for
weeks at nine that's late enough."

Evelyn went about all day with a lighter step than her friends had yet
seen her assume.

"Now remember, I trust her absolutely to your care," Charlotte said to
Jeff that evening, as he appeared, his arms full of accessories for
making his charge comfortable.

Evelyn, in furs and heavy coat, smiled at her escort. "I'm not a bit
afraid," she said. "Oh, what a beautiful night! The moon is out. Is that
the sleigh coming up the street now, with all those horns? What fun!"

"I want to put Miss Lee right in the middle of everything!" Jeff called
out, as the sleighload stopped. "I'm particularly requested not to let a
breath of frost strike her."

"Come on, here's just the spot," answered Carolyn Houghton, holding out
a welcoming hand; and then the girl from the South, who had never known
the sleighing-party of the North, found herself being whirled away over
the road, to an accompaniment of youthful merriment, bursts of songs and
tooting of horns.

Before it seemed possible the twelve miles of fine sleighing had been
covered, and the old farmhouse, its door flung hospitably open at the
sound of the horns, was invaded by the gay band.

Evelyn, in a quaint up-stairs bedroom, lighted by kerosene lamps and
warmed by a roaring wood fire in an old-fashioned box stove, was
attended by