"What do you like, you Jo Keyes over there?" Nan called out.
No reply came from the head buried in the pillow.
"Here, you Josephine Schlüssel, are you asleep? Why don't you speak up?" Nan picked up a worsted slipper and threw it across the room. The slipper landed on Jo's head and she responded by raising rather a teary face.
"You've all been so perfectly lovely to me," she said, "so much lovelier than they ever are at home. Instead of just giving me fifty pfennige presents as you ought to have done, you've treated me just as if I were one of you."
"Well, you needn't cry about it," said Nan roughly, herself quite overcome by this evidence of feeling on Jo's part. "You are one of us, of course. Tell what you like best, old girl, or I'll throw this other slipper at you, and then I can't get up to-day, for I am never going to set my feet on these cold boards."
"Oh, my kodak, of course," returned Jo. "It was so dear of your Aunt Helen to give it to me, and it is such a beauty. I have always so longed for one. Then that dear chain, Nan, you——"
"Time to hear from you, Mary Lee," cried Nan interrupting further remarks from Jo. "What's your particular wanity?"
Mary Lee hesitated a moment. "I think I like the picture of Miss Dolores in her manta de Manila."
"I knew you'd say that," responded Nan. "I was just waiting to hear. Hallo, Jack, in there, why don't you let us hear from you?"
"I'm coming in to tell you." The answer was prompt, and presently Jack in red wrapper and slippers appeared, stocking in hand. "I'll tell you, Nan, but I won't tell any one else," she said. She came close to the bed and whispered something in Nan's ear. Nan laughed. It was her own present to her little sister which was the one preferred. It was a cunning figure of an owl which Nan had marked: "The moping owl doth to the moon complain." It was like Jack to prefer this. The owl was of the porcelain ware for which Bavaria is well known, and when the head was removed Jack discovered the owl was filled with chocolates, though it was not this fact which made her favor it above the rest of her gifts.