thusiasm.

"Splendid!" cried Beth. "Jean, it is an inspiration, sure enough.
Haven't we been horribly selfish--thinking of nothing but our own
gifts and fun and pleasure? I really feel ashamed."

"Let us do the thing up the very best way we can," said Nellie,
forgetting even her beloved chocolates in her eagerness. "The shops
are open yet. Let us go up town and invest."

Five minutes later five capped and jacketed figures were scurrying up
the street in the frosty, starlit December dusk. Miss Allen in her
cold little room heard their gay voices and sighed. She was crying by
herself in the dark. It was Christmas for everybody but her, she
thought drearily.

In an hour the girls came back with their purchases.

"Now, let's hold a council of war," said Jean jubilantly. "I hadn't
the faintest idea what Miss Allen would like so I just guessed wildly.
I got her a lace handkerchief and a big bottle of perfume and a
painted photograph frame--and I'll stick my own photo in it for fun.
That was really all I could afford. Christmas purchases have left my
purse dreadfully lean."

"I got her a glove-box and a pin tray," said Belle, "and Olive got her
a calendar and Whittier's poems. And besides we are going to give her
half of that big plummy fruit cake Mother sent us from home. I'm sure
she hasn't tasted anything so delicious for years, for fruit cakes
don't grow on Chestnut Terrace and she never goes anywhere else for a
meal."

Beth had bought a pretty cup and saucer and said she meant to give one
of her pretty water-colours too. Nellie, true to her reputation, had
invested in a big box of chocolate creams, a gorgeously striped candy
cane, a bag of oranges, and a brilliant lampshade of rose-coloured
crepe paper to top off with.

"It makes such a lot of show for the money," she explained. "I am
bankrupt, like Jean."

"Well, we've got a lot of pretty things," said Jean in a tone of
satisfaction. "Now we must do them up nicely. Will you wrap them in
tissue paper, girls, and tie them with baby ribbon--here's a box of
it--while I write that letter?"

While the others chatted over their parcels Jean wrote her letter, and
Jean could write delightful letters. She had a decided talent in that
respect, and her correspondents all declared her letters to be things
of beauty and joy forever. She put her best into Miss Allen's
Christmas letter. Since then she has written many bright and clever
things, but I do not believe she ever