"The Atwoods—yes. It gets on my nerves to see them sitting there so dully, every day when I pass by on my way to school."
"We certainly won't forget them. We can do something that won't make any demand on our treasury, so Tom won't mind our adding them to our Christmas list."
"I dare say we'll think of others before we go much farther. What we need to do now is to decide on things to make for the Glen Pointers," and the talk went off into a discussion which proved to be merely a selection from what they had learned to do while they were making up their parcels for the real Christmas Ship. Now, with but a short time before Christmas, they chose articles that could be made quickly. The girls also decided on the candies that each should make to fill the boxes, and they made requisition on the treasury for the materials so that they could go to work at once upon the lasting kinds. Before the afternoon was over the attic resumed once more the busy look it had worn for so many weeks before the sailing of the Jason.
"Ethel Blue!" came a call up the attic stairs.
Ethel Blue ran down to see what her aunt wanted, and came back beaming, two letters in her hand.
"Here's a letter from Mrs. Jackson to Aunt Marian saying that Katharine may come to us for a fortnight, and another one from Katharine to me telling how crazy she is to come. Isn't it fine!"
Ethel threw her arm over Ethel Brown's shoulder and pulled her into the march that was the Mortons' expression of great pleasure: "One, two, three, back; one, two, three, back," around the attic.
"When is she coming?" asked Roger, who had never seen Katharine and so was able to endure calmly the prospect of her visit.
"Two days before Christmas—that's Wednesday in the afternoon."
"We'll ask grandmother to let us have the car to go and get her; it's so much more fun than the train," proposed Ethel Brown.