e crop of home knitted mittens that Green Valley girls and boys
wore with pride and comfort. No city pair of gloves ever equaled
grandma's knitted ones that went very nearly to the elbow and were the
only thing for skating and coasting.

Christmas was the time too when dreams came true. Fanny Foster knew
this when Christmas morning she opened a parcel and found a beautiful
silk petticoat. No card came with it but Fanny knew.

Hen Tomlins had a baby boy for his best Christmas gift. Agnes had
always opposed all talk of adopting a baby, but this year that was her
gift to Hen. And they were all happy about it.

Of course, even in Green Valley a certain amount of foolishness
prevailed. Everybody smiled when a week before Christmas Jessie
Williams said she had all her presents ready but Arthur's; that she was
waiting for the next pay day to get his; that she believed she'd get
him a new pink silk lamp shade but she knew beforehand he wouldn't be
pleased and would only say that he wished to heaven she'd let him have
the money.

Lutie Barlow was badly disappointed with the hundred and fifty dollar
victrola her husband bought her. She said she wanted a red cow to
match her Rhode Island Reds.

Perhaps no one in Green Valley was so generously remembered as the
young minister. But though every one of the many gifts that came
pleased him he was strangely unhappy and restless. Invitations as
usual had poured in on him but he had chosen to spend the day with
Grandma Wentworth. And yet, though he was glad to be with her, his
thoughts strayed off to a certain gray day in the fall when he ran down
a hill with a girl's hand in his. He remembered the surge of joy that
had rushed through him when he got her safely into his storm-proof
house and banged shut the door on the stormy world without.

He thought of the hour they spent in silence before the fire that
roared exultantly as the storm tore with angry fingers at the doors and
windows. That, he now felt, was the most perfect hour of his life.

His mind was struggling to understand these memories, these strange new
emotions. He had a queer feeling that something wonderful was waiting
just outside his reach, something was waiting for his recognition.

He was standing in Grandma Wentworth's dining room, looking out the
window at the winter landscape. Grandma was in the kitchen seeing to
the dinner, for she was to have quite a party--Roger and David, Mrs.
Brownlee and