Where there is good discipline and good scholarship, neither the rules nor the lessons are allowed to be slighted; but as December days shorten, and December cold strengthens, even the most indolent pupil finds herself under a certain stress of occupation which she cannot resist.
Shirking can find no place in the recitation-room. Moments that have been idled away now become precious, each one laden with its weight of some loving remembrance to be made for the dear ones at home.
Such treasures of delicate silks, laces, plushes, velvets, ribbons, embroideries, card-boards, tassels, cords, gilt in every shape and capable of every use; such pretty gift-books, booklets, cards, afghans, sofa-pillows, head-rests; such wonders of ingenuity in working up places for thermometers, putting them in dust-pans, tying them onto bread-rollers, slipping them behind wonderful clusters of sweet painted flowers; such pen-wipers, such blotters, work-baskets, paper-baskets, bureau coverings, bureau mats! napery of all varieties; and, after all, this enumeration is but the beginning of what in Montrose Academy was hidden in drawers, stowed away in most impossible and impracticable places, yet always ready to the hand for a spare moment. Two hundred 178 girls,—for by this time most of the diphtheritic runaways had returned,—and all, without an exception, were Christmas busy! Christmas crazy! What a changed place it made of the school!
Benedictions on the hallowed holiday! If we put aside its religious bearing, think of it only as a time when heart goes out to heart, even the most selfish of us all will remember to show our love in a visible token of affection.
If, with all this, we can make our offerings hallowed by a tenderer love and a deeper affection for Him in whose honor the whole world keeps the festival, then, indeed, the day becomes to us the most blessed and beautiful of our lives!
Marion Parke saw it as it was kept here in an entirely new way. At her Western home, her father had made it a day of religious observance. Marion had always been leader in trimming their church with the pretty greens which their mild winter spared to them, and on Christmas Sunday they sang Christmas hymns, and listened to a Christmas sermon. On Christmas Eve they had a Christmas-tree, and hung it with such useful gifts as their necessities demanded and a small purse could provide. It was a happy, precious day, simply and heartily kept; but here she was lost in wonder, as she was called from room to room to see the rare and beautiful gifts which, it seemed to her, abounded everywhere. Money to purchase such things for herself to give away she had not, but she watched her room-mates, as they 179 deftly prepared their gifts for their Rock Cove homes, with delight.
How busy and happy they were! Sometimes Marion’s longing to send something, if only a little remembrance, home brought the tears into her eyes.
Gladys was the first to see this and to guess its cause. At once she began to purchase new silks, trimmings of all kinds, booklets, cards, increasing her store, until even her cousins, accustomed as they were to her fitful extravagances, wondered at her.
When her drawers, never too orderly, began to assume a chaotic appearance, she said fretfully one morning to Marion Parke, who was looking and laughing at the chaos,—
“I should think, instead of laughing at me, it would be a great deal better natured in you to help me put them into some kind of order. Your drawer isn’t half full. Look here! open it, and let me tuck some of these duds in.”