Obeying the familiar mandate, which peered at her from newspaper, store or street car, “Do Your Christmas Shopping Early,” she lovingly stored away the numerous beribboned bundles designed for intimate friends at least a week before Christmas. That last week she left open in order to go about the business of making a merry Christmas for the needy. As on the previous year Jerry Macy and Constance were her right-hand men. Susan, Irma, Muriel and Harriet also caught the fever of giving and the six girls worked zealously, inspired by the highest motives, to bring happiness to the poverty-stricken.
Christmas morning brought Marjorie an unusual windfall of gifts. It seemed as though everyone she liked had remembered her. Looking back on the previous Christmas, she remembered rather sadly the Flag of Truce and all that it had signified. This year Mary and she were again one at heart. She dropped a few tears of sheer happiness over Mary’s long Christmas letter and the beautiful embroidered Mexican scarf that had come with it. She had sent Mary a wonderful silver desk set engraved with M. to M., which she hoped wistfully that Mary would like as much as she cherished her exquisite scarf.
The Christmas vacation was, as usual, a perpetual round of gaiety. Jerry and Hal gave their usual dance. Constance gave a New Year’s hop. Harriet and Muriel entertained their friends at luncheons, while Marjorie herself sent out invitations for an old-fashioned sleigh-ride party, with an informal supper and dance at her home on the return. These social events, with some few others of equal pleasure, sent Father Time spinning along giddily.
“Aren’t you sorry it’s all over?” sighed Constance, as she and Marjorie lingered at the Macys’ gate at the close of their first day at school after the holidays.
“Sorry’s no name for it,” declared Jerry. “We certainly had one beautiful time, I mean a beautiful time. Honestly, I liked the getting things ready for other folks best of all, though. I like to keep busy. I wish we had something to do or somebody to help all the time. I’m going to poke around and see what I can stir up. I try to do the sisterly, helpful act toward Hal; picking up the stuff he strews all over the house and locating lost junk, I mean articles, but he’s about as appreciative as a Feejee Islander. You know how grateful they are.”
“I saw one in a circus once,” laughed Constance reminiscently. “I wasn’t impressed with his sense of gratitude. Someone threw him a peanut and he flung it back and hit an old gentleman in the eye.”
A general giggle arose at the erring Feejee’s strange conception of gratitude.
“That will be nice to tell Hal when he shows the same delicate sort of thankfulness,” grinned Jerry. “I’m not going to waste my precious talents on him all winter. I’m going to dig up something better. If you girls hear of anything, run all the way to our house, any hour of the day or night, and tell your friend Jerry Geraldine Jeremiah. All three are one, as Rudyard Kipling says in something or other he wrote.”
“I love Kipling’s books,” said Constance. “One of the first things I did when I wasn’t poor any longer was to buy a whole set. That first year at Sanford High I tried to get them in the school library. But there were only two or three of them.”
“That library is terribly run down,” asserted Jerry. “They haven’t half the books there they ought to have. I was talking to my father about it the other night. He promised to put it before the Board. I hope he does. Then maybe we’ll get some more books. I don’t care so much for myself. I can get all the books I want. But there are a lot of girls that can’t, who need special ones for reading courses.”