ou'd
make up your mind what you were going to give me for Christmas."

"Well," and "I do remember that much quite nicely."

"Well, is it bought?"

"No, I never buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving."

"Then, DEAR Mr. Aladdin, would you buy me something different, something
that I want to give away, and buy it a little sooner than Christmas?"

"That depends. I don't relish having my Christmas presents given away.
I like to have them kept forever in little girls' bureau drawers, all
wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I'll
change my mind. What is it you want?"

"I need a wedding ring dreadfully," said Rebecca, "but it's a sacred
secret."

Adam Ladd's eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself with
pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, a
person of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as this
child? Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that made
him so delightful to young people.

"I thought it was perfectly understood between us," he said, "that if
you could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that I
was to ride up to the brick house on my snow white"--

"Coal black," corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warning
finger.

"Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white finger,
draw you up behind me on my pillion"--

"And Emma Jane, too," Rebecca interrupted.

"I think I didn't mention Emma Jane," argued Mr. Aladdin. "Three on a
pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of a
prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle in the forest."

"Emma Jane never leaps, and she'd be afraid of a prancing chestnut,"
objected Rebecca.

"Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now, without any
explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which shows
plainly that you are planning to ride off on a snow white--I mean coal
black--charger with somebody else."

Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaic
world no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the fool
according to his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddle
but Mr. Aladdin.

"The ring isn't for ME!" she explained carefully. "You know very well
that Emma Jane nor I can't be married till we're through Quackenbos's
Grammar, Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails and
run a sewing machine. The ring is for a friend.