Eleanor's wistful eyes asked the question before her lips said, "Not papa and mamma?"
Aunt Dora stooped and kissed her. "No, dear, I wish I could say it was they for whom I am looking, but I'll tell you this much: they are strangers to me."
Eleanor puzzled over this. It seemed funny for Aunt Dora to entertain strangers at Christmas time, and she was rather disappointed that it should be so; it seemed as if it made a more formal day of it than she could enjoy. She determined to ask Rock about it so soon as she should have a chance, but he knew no more about it than she did and could not coax the secret from his mother. Rock had grown, Eleanor discovered, and although he was quite a rough and tumble boy, liking to be out of doors and to play all sorts of games requiring muscle, he was as kind and polite and gentle when he was in the house, as he ever had been, and Eleanor did not feel that her old comrade had lost anything by going to boarding-school. He was about a year older than Eleanor and she had known him when his mother was a widow and before she had married Eleanor's Uncle Heath.
"It's too bad that you can't go down town with me to buy my presents," Rock said to her the day he arrived. "But, I say, Dimple it's jolly to have you here. I was so glad when I heard you were coming."
"You weren't as glad as I was," she returned. "And isn't it fine that you don't have to go back to that hateful school?"
Rock looked sober. "Yes, it is," he replied. "Some of the fellows, who have been to other schools say they aren't half bad, but you see, this one has all new teachers this year, and though it used to be fine a few years ago, it's not so any more. You see father thought it was the same or he wouldn't have sent me there." One thing that Eleanor liked about Rock was his loyalty to her Uncle Heath.
The days passed quickly enough and when Christmas eve came around Eleanor, Rock, Mr. and Mrs. Heath Dallas were to see the tree at Aunt Nellie's. A fine affair it was, and it made a great show in the dining-room where it stood. Florence had several brothers and sisters and it seemed a big family to Eleanor, for, first, there was Kitty, the eldest daughter who was sixteen, and then came Marian, and next Florence, who was not quite ten, and then the three younger children, Lee and Gertrude, and Ted, the baby. This youngest member of the family was not old enough to do much more than laugh and coo at the shining tree, but Lee and Gertrude were just of the age to most appreciate the glittering glories of stars and rings and balls and glistening baubles.
The presents were not to be given till the next morning, although little Gertrude insisted upon making every one guess what she had for him or her, and in most cases managed to convey the information as to what it was. And then, because Rock said he was not going to hang up his stocking because he was too big to do such babyish things, his mother yielded to Florence's pleading for Eleanor's company for over night, promising that she should not even be asked to stay to breakfast if she could but be on hand to hang up her stocking with the rest.
"Don't you dare to stay too long," said Rock. "We're going to have our presents right after breakfast, aren't you, mamma?"
Mrs. Dallas looked at her husband. "Unless you and Eleanor can wait till evening when we have the tree."