"Your auntie helped with the celebration last year at the hospital, Kitty-cat," said her mother, "so it is only fair that they should have her in the country this year."
"But Malcolm and Keith were with her both times," persisted Kitty, jealously. "I think that it is just too bad that she isn't twins."
Rob and Ranald went with the girls to help distribute the trees. It seemed as if a tiny forest had been carried out of fairyland and set in long, glittering rows down the sides of the wards. One twinkled and bloomed beside each little white bed. The children did not stay long in the wards. They were more interested in the little room at the end of the hall,—Allison's room, that was known all over the building now as "The Fold of the Good Shepherd." The room where two little sisters lost from each other so long, but brought together at last, lived through the happy hours, hand in hand.
Molly's face had lost every trace of its old sullen pout, and fairly shone with contentment as she sat by Dot's bed, smoothing her pillow, feeding her from time to time as the nurse directed, and singing softly when the tired eyes drooped wearily to sleep.
"She would make a fine nurse," said the matron to Mrs. Walton. "She is strong and patient, and seems to have so much sense about what to do for a sick person. Usually we wouldn't think of letting anybody come in as she is doing, but she minds the nurse's slightest nod, and seems to be doing Dot more good than medicine."
It had cost Elise a pang to give up her cherished stocking even as a loan, but she was more than repaid by the pleasure it gave the child, who had known no Christmas story and none of its joy since she had been large enough to remember.
They went back to their homes as soon afterward as possible, Lloyd to hang up her stocking at Locust, and the children to put theirs by the library fire One plain little blue one hung among the gay pictured ones, no mistletoe upon it, no holly, no jingling bells, no printed rhymes; but as Mrs. Walton gathered Elise's little white gowned form in her arms, she repeated something that made the child look up wonderingly.
"Oh, mamma!" she cried. "Does it mean that the little Christ-child counts it just the same—my lending the stocking to Dot and Molly—as if I had loaned it to him?"
"Just the same, little one."
"And he is glad?" She asked the question in an awed whisper.