"It's like trying to keep things hot when somebody is late and keeps dinner waiting," complained Mary. "If you can't eat when it's all ready, some of the things are sure to dry up and some to get cold. I was worked up to quite a festive state of mind day before yesterday, but my enthusiasm is all drying up and cooling off now."
"Here's something to warm it over again," announced Norman, coming in from the express office with a box on his shoulder. "Here's the first gift to arrive. Let's open up right now, and open each thing that comes after this when it comes instead of waiting for one grand surprise on Christmas morning. You never will try my way, and it would spread the pleasure out and make it last lots longer if you only would. You're bound to get more enjoyment out of each thing if you give your undivided attention to it."
For once Norman's suggestion, made yearly, was not opposed, and as he pried the lid off the box Mary flopped down on the floor beside it, Jack wheeled his chair closer, and Mrs. Ware came in from the next room in answer to their eager calls that it was from Joyce.
Each one of the studio family had contributed to the filling of the box. The holly-wreaths on top, tied with great bows of wide red ribbon, were from Miss Henrietta Robbins.
"Don't you know," exclaimed Mary, as she lifted them out and held them up for them all to admire, "that Miss Henrietta has turned that studio into a perfect bower of Christmas greens? She gives it all the elegant costly touches that Joyce never could afford, just as she's put the finishing touch on these wreaths with this beautiful ribbon. It's wide enough and satiny enough for a sash."
"And isn't it just like little Mrs. Boyd to send this!" she cried a moment later, when the opening of a fancy pasteboard box revealed a doll about six inches long, dressed like a ballet dancer. Its fluffy scarlet skirts hid the leaves of a needle-book, concealed among its folds, and from the ends of the sash, by which it was intended to dangle, hung a tiny emery bag in the shape of a strawberry, and a little silk thimble-case.
"She got the idea for that from the Ladies' Home Magazine, I am sure. She adores the pages that tell how to evolve your entire spring outfit from a shoe-string and a strip of left-over embroidery. It's not that she's trying to economize. Joyce says she has the piece-bag habit. The girls tease her about not being able to see a scrap of goods without wishing to find some way to use it, but they love the homey flavor her home-made things give to the house. She is as old-fashioned and dear in her ways as she is in her ideas of art."
"That is an unusually pretty doll," remarked Mrs. Ware as Mary swung it around by its sash.
"Yes," she answered, "it's the kind Hazel Lee and I were always wishing for. Ours were flaxen haired, and this has raven curls. We would have called her 'Lady Agatha' if we had had her then. I believe I'll name her that now," she added with a glance towards Jack to see if he understood the allusion.
But Jack was not noticing. He was turning the pages of a handsomely illustrated work on Geology, a book he had long wanted to own. Joyce had had little to spend this year compared with last, but in her hurried shopping expeditions, she had considered the tastes and needs of each one so well that every gift was hailed with delight.