work of the quartette of Lady Bountifuls by no means ended with the
Goronofskys. Not a tenant of the Stower Estate was missed. Even Mrs.
Kranz herself was remembered by the Corner House girls, who presented
her, in combination, a handsome shopping bag to carry when she went
downtown to the bank.

It was a busy afternoon and evening they spent on Meadow Street--for
they did not get home to a late supper until eight o'clock. But their
comments upon their adventures were characteristic.

"It is _so_ satisfactory," said Ruth, placidly, "to make other people
happy."

"I'm dog tired," declared Agnes, "but I'd love to start right out and do
it all over again!"

"I--I hope the little Maroni baby won't lick all the red paint off that
rattle and make herself sick," sighed Tess, reflectively.

"If she does we can buy her a new rattle. It didn't cost but ten cents,"
Dot rejoined, seeing at the moment but one side of the catastrophe.

CHAPTER XVII

"THAT CIRCUS BOY"

The first Christmas since the Kenway girls had "come into" Uncle Peter's
estate was bound to be a memorable one for Ruth and Agnes and Tess and
Dot.

Mother Kenway, while she had lived, had believed in the old-fashioned
New England Christmas. The sisters had never had a tree, but they always
hung their stockings on a line behind the "base-burner" in the
sitting-room of the Bloomingsburg tenement. So now they hung them in a
row by the dining-room mantelpiece in the old Corner House.

Uncle Rufus took a great deal of interest in this proceeding. He took
out the fire-board from the old-fashioned chimneyplace, so as to give
ingress to Santa Clans when the reindeers of that good saint should land
upon the Corner House roof.

Dot held to her first belief in the personal existence of Saint Nick,
and although Tess had some doubts as to his real identity, she would not
for the world have said anything to weaken Dot's belief.

There was no stove in the way in the dining-room, for the furnace--put
into the cellar by Uncle Peter only shortly before his death--heated the
two lower floors of the main part of the house, as well as the kitchen
wing, in which the girls and Mrs. MacCall slept.

The girls had begged Neale O'Neil to hang up his stocking with theirs,
but he refused--rather gruffly, it must be confessed. Mrs. MacCall and
Uncle Rufus, however, were prevailed upon to add their hose to the line.
Aunt Sarah rather snappishly objected to "exposing her sto