and-red plaid? Now listen at me! I'm doing just
what Miss Lucrecia does to everything that's sent her. The only
pleasure she gets out of her presents is making fun of them and
snapping at the people who send them. She's an awful snapper. The
Damanarkist sent these cigars. They smell good. He don't believe in
Christmas, but he sent Father and me both a present. I hope he'll like
the picture-frame I made for his mother's picture. His mother's dead,
but he believed in her. She was the only thing he did believe in. A
man who don't believe in his mother--Oh, _my_ precious mother!"

With a trembling movement the little locket was taken from the box and
opened and the picture in it kissed passionately; then, without
warning, the child crumpled up and hot tears fell fast over the
quivering face. "I do want you, my mother! Everybody wants a mother at
Christmas, and I haven't had one since I was seven. Father tries to
fill my stocking, but it isn't a mother-stocking, and I just ache and
ache to--to have one like you'd fix. I want--" The words came
tremblingly, and presently she sat up.

"Carmencita Bell, you are a baby. Behave--your--self!" With the end of
the gingham apron the big blue eyes were wiped. "You can't do much in
this world, but you can keep from crying. Suppose Father was to know."
Her back straightened and her head went up. "Father isn't ever going
to know, and if I don't fill this stocking it won't be hanging on the
end of the mantelpiece when he wakes up. The locket must go in the
toe."

CHAPTER XVII

In half an hour the stocking, big and bulging, was hung in its
accustomed place, the packages for her father put on a chair by
themselves, and those for her left on the table, and as she rearranged
the latter something about the largest one arrested her attention,
and, stopping, she gazed at it with eyes puzzled and uncertain.

It looked--Cautiously her fingers were laid upon it. Undoubtedly it
looked like the box in which had been put the beautiful dark-blue coat
she had bought for the little friend of her friend. And that other box
was the size of the one the two dresses had been put in; and that was
a hat-box, and that a shoe-box, and the sash and beads and gloves and
ribbons, all the little things, had been put in a box that size. Every
drop of blood surged hotly, tremblingly, and with eyes staring and
lips half parted her breath came unsteadily.

In the confusion of their coming she had not notice