WHAT JANET DID WITH HER CHRISTMAS PRESENT.
BY L. J. L.
WHEN Janet awoke on Christmas morning and saw her stocking, which had been placed most invitingly beside the chimney the night before, hanging as limp and apparently as empty as at the moment of leaving it there, she was not a little astonished as well as grieved at the thought that Santa Claus had passed her by.
This was not strange, for such a thing had never happened before; but after rubbing her eyes to make sure of being awake, she looked again and was so positive it had occurred now, notwithstanding there was no reason to expect it, that when she arose to prepare for breakfast she did not take the pains to so much as peep into her stocking to verify her surmises.
And there is no telling when she would have done so had not her pride whispered, as she was about to leave the room, that it would be well to put the empty stocking out of sight, and thus hide from others the evidence of her disappointment.
But the moment she laid her hand upon it for this purpose she discovered that she had been laboring under a great mistake. It was not empty. Concealed in a fold of the upper part was a sealed envelope directed to Miss Janet Dunstan, and beside it a neat package wrapped in tissue-paper which, when unrolled, she found to contain five ten-dollar bills!
What could it mean? Could so much money be really hers?
For a little while Janet was too much bewildered to think of the note in her hand as a probable explanation, but presently she caught sight of it, and with a little laugh at her own stupidity she opened it and found in Grandpa’s hand-writing the quaintest, queerest epistle it had ever been hers to receive.