Oh come, let us adore Him,
Oh come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.”
There was an instant’s hush after this and then a surprising amount of noise. Surely Esther’s idea had been a very lovely one, for there was little Christmas peace and quiet at the cabin for the rest of the wonderful and eventful day.
Some weeks before the girls had decided that there would be no present giving among themselves except the merest trifles, since all their money and energy must be spent in making a success of their Camp Fire play, but this did not forbid the receiving of gifts from the outside. So before breakfast was over offerings began to arrive, some of them for individual girls but more for the camp. Mr. and Mrs. Webster sent from the farm a great roasted goose stuffed with chestnuts, a baked ham and two immense mince pies, while Billy Webster, who drove over to bring the gifts, shyly tucked into Mollie’s hands a bouquet of pink geraniums and lemon verbena from his mother’s little indoor garden. To Polly, with a perfectly serious expression, he presented a bunch of thistles grown on the mountains that fall and made very brilliant and effective by having their centers dyed scarlet and being tied with a bright red ribbon. They were beautiful enough to have been bestowed on any one and would be an ornament for the cabin living room all winter, and yet Polly, though she was far too clever to betray herself, could not but wonder if there were not a double meaning attached to Billy’s gift.
Dick Ashton gave no individual presents, not even one to Betty, but to the club he gave a reading lamp so brilliant that half a dozen girls might do their studying around it at night. If it were placed on the piano Esther might be able to read her most intricate music without difficulty.
Then there were other more valuable gifts, Mr. Wharton, Sylvia’s father, who had unexpectedly gone to Europe for a few weeks, left a check to supply the winter’s coal bill, while Mrs. O’Neill from over in Ireland sent a set of kitchen aprons, which she had made during that winter, for each member of the Sunrise club including Mammy.
There was a mysterious communication received by Betty Ashton, however, of which she did not speak to any one, not even to Polly. She was not at all sure from whom it came, but naturally there was but one person whom she could suspect. The post-mark was a near-by town, and it was a common looking gift—just a card with the picture of a ladder rising in the air, apparently by its own volition, and very slowly ascending it the figure of a young man. Yet the words written below were of far finer significance than the picture and Betty really wondered how they had ever made their appeal.
“And men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.”
At four o’clock, when the girls were resting for an hour before getting ready for the evening’s entertainment, convinced that there was nothing more to come for any one of them, there appeared at the cabin door certainly the most unlooked-for gift.
Rose happened for the moment to be alone in the living room, having firmly ordered the girls off to their bedrooms to lie down while she attended to some final arrangements, such as finding space for a few more chairs for their audience than had been sent out from town an hour before.