THE CHRISTMAS MAKERS’ CLUB

“‘NOW CHILDREN, WE MUST MAKE OUR PLANS.’”

(See [page 20])

The Christmas Makers’ Club

BY
EDITH A. SAWYER

Illustrated by ADA C. WILLIAMSON

Of glad things there be ... four;

A lark above the old nest blithely singing,

A wild rose clinging

In safety to a rock: a shepherd bringing

A lamb, found, in his arms,

And Christmas bells a-ringing.

Willis Boyd Allen

Copyright, 1908
By L. C. Page & Company
(INCORPORATED)

All rights reserved

First Impression, May, 1908

COLONIAL PRESS
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U.S.A.

To
Margaret and Ruth
Dorothy and ’Nita

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE CHRISTMAS MAKERS’ CLUB

CHAPTER I
THE CLUB GATHERS FOR WORK AND PLAY

Didst thou never know

The joy of following the path untrod?

—Margaret E. Sherwood: Persephone.

“HOW I wish we had something new and interesting to do Friday afternoons!” said Elsa Danforth, a slim girl in a black coat, with a soft, wide black felt hat set back on the yellow hair which floated like a cloud of pale gold over her shoulders. Elsa was the tallest of the three girls who had hurried away from school together that gray mid-November afternoon. They were just now turning into Washington Avenue.

“It’s too cold to play outdoors,” said Betty White, dancing on ahead, her bag of school-books swung over her shoulder. Betty’s brown eyes danced like her feet, and so did the capes to her long blue coat and the wavy brown hair tied back with a bow of wide white ribbon.

“Isn’t there something we can do?” asked Alice Holt, the youngest and smallest of the three, hurrying to keep up with the others.

“Play dolls or play school is all I can think of,” said Betty. “O Elsa, we might go to your house and play with you!” she added, turning to Elsa. Betty had wanted to have a good look at the great house where Elsa Danforth lived with her grandmother. Betty had been in the house only twice, and then but for a few moments, since the Danforths came there in September.

“But—” began Elsa. Then she stopped; she could not bear to say that her grandmother had told her not to bring children home with her to play.

“I tell you what let’s do,” Alice exclaimed, before Betty could say anything. “Let’s start some kind of a club, and have it meet Friday afternoons. We might have it a Christmas Club.”

“Only grown-up people have clubs,” objected Betty instantly; she was still thinking of what fun it would be to go all over the Danforth house.

“We could have a club, though we are children,” said Elsa eagerly. “I am almost twelve years old.”

“I am only eleven,” said Betty, who, however, was nearly as tall as Elsa.

“And I am only ten and a half,” said Alice, running a little ahead, her blue eyes very wide open with interest. “But it truly doesn’t matter how old we are; we all play together and we like the same things.” Alice was a quaint little figure. She looked like a rather shabbily dressed doll, with her blue eyes and pink cheeks, her thick blue coat which came just to her knees, and a shaggy blue tam-o’-shanter, below which hung very smooth hair cut short around her neck.

“If we have a club, where will it meet?” asked Elsa.

“It can come to my house,” said Betty, beginning to be interested, and dancing on ahead, backward now.

“It can meet at my house, too, though I live rather far away,” said Alice.

Elsa walked on slowly, behind the others. She alone did not offer to have the club meet at her home.

They were directly in front of Betty’s home, a large and pleasant-looking house on this main avenue of the suburban town of Berkeley. “Come into my house and we will start the club now,” urged Betty, running up the front steps. But she stopped as Elsa said: “I must go and ask grandmother if I can belong.”

“O, of course she will let you,” exclaimed Betty. But Elsa, with flying yellow hair, was already half-way home. So Betty and Alice waited on the top step.

In a very short time Elsa came running back and announced breathlessly: “Yes—I can belong—and I can stay till five o’clock.” Her usually pale face was rosy from the haste, and her wide-brimmed hat had slipped down over her loose, fair hair.

It would be hard to find three girls more unlike than these three good friends who went hurrying into the house together. Elsa, the oldest, had a sensitive face and deep violet-gray eyes, which, with her soft, silky hair, gave her a delicate, almost flower-like look. Betty, next in age, was a lively, wide-awake girl with merry brown eyes and bright cheeks; she was always a leader, and sometimes a wilful one, in any fun or adventure. Alice—“Baby Alice,” as Betty often teasingly called her—had softly rounded cheeks, big blue eyes, and a fair, high forehead. Alice was a dreamy, rather quiet child, but everybody loved her for her unselfish, affectionate ways.

Betty opened the hall door and went ahead through the wide hall. “Hang your coats and things here in the closet,” she cried, taking off her overshoes, “and come on up to the nursery. We can have it all to ourselves.”

Elsa’s eyes shone with pleasure as she looked around the hospitable hall and at the huge fireplace where a bright fire burned. She always felt the homelikeness of the Whites’ house the moment she came into it. It was so unlike her grandmother’s house, where everything was stiff and stately.

Elsa especially loved the nursery, Betty’s bedroom and playroom, for it had picture-paper of children resting under trees and of wandering brooks which led to other children and other trees; it had also a broad window-shelf filled with bright-blossoming geraniums, and above, a cage with three tiny East Indian strawberry-birds; and—best of all to Elsa—a row of dolls, large and small, on a long, chintz-covered window-seat between Betty’s blue-and-white bed on one side and her dolls’ house on the other. Indeed, Elsa loved Betty’s room quite as much as Betty herself did.

Alice had never been in the room before. “O, what dear, lovely birds!” she exclaimed, clasping her dimpled hands and looking up with round, surprised eyes at the three mites of birds, brown with red spots, red eyes and red beaks, and legs so thin and needle-like as to seem scarcely strong enough to support even the tiny bodies.

“They are the dearest things,” said Betty enthusiastically. “Uncle John brought them to me from India. I am glad there are three of them, because if one dies there will be two left.”

“But what if two die?” asked Alice anxiously.

That, however, Betty did not want to think of, so she said hurriedly: “Come on, let’s decide about the club.”

“What shall we name it?” asked Elsa, who had settled herself on the soft rug by the bedside, with one elbow on the window-seat so that she could better look at the dolls.

“The Friday Club,” suggested Betty, who was sitting at the foot of the bed.

“I like ‘Club of Three,’” said Alice, turning away from the strawberry birds with a little sigh of happiness.

“I don’t like either of those names,” said Elsa. “Why not call it the Christmas Club, if that is what it is going to be?”

“Anybody can have a Christmas Club,” objected Betty, tightening the white ribbon bow on her hair.

“Why not ask somebody to name it for us?” suggested Alice.

“No, we must name it ourselves, and keep the name a secret,” came Betty’s quick answer.

“Then let’s choose one of us president, and let her name it,” said Elsa, who had Betty’s smallest doll in her lap now.

“All right,” replied Betty, looking from Elsa to Alice, whose eyes were again fixed upon the birds. Then, because Alice was always peacemaker, Betty said: “I will choose Alice for president.”

“And I will choose Elsa,” said Alice quickly, looking around.

“I will choose Betty,” said Elsa.

“Dear me!” cried Betty, jumping up so suddenly that the tiny brown-and-red birds began fluttering around their cage; “we are all president, and that means nobody is president, and we haven’t any name either.”

“I think we’d better give up the club,” said Alice, seeing trouble ahead.

“It was you who wanted to start it, and now you are backing out, Alice,” cried Betty, stamping her foot impatiently. The little birds had a panic of fluttering.

“I’m not backing out, only if we are going to get into a fuss the first thing, we might as well give it up,” said Alice wisely.

“Why not play dolls?” suggested Elsa, noticing that the hands of the blue-and-white clock on the shelf were pointing at four. Elsa did not have many chances to be with other children, and she did not like to have the time go so fast now.

“No, let’s stick to the club,” insisted Betty, reseating herself on the bed.

Just then Betty’s mother came to the nursery door with a rosy-cheeked baby in her arms who looked like a smaller Betty. The white-capped nurse followed close behind.

“I am sorry to disturb you, children,” said Mrs. White, after a pleasant word of greeting, “but Nurse has just brought baby in from out-of-doors, and she wants to put him in the nursery, as he is fretful, and watching the birds always quiets him. Take your friends down to the living-room, Betty.”

“But, mother, we are just starting—” began Betty.

“Betty dear, remember not to argue when I ask you to do anything,” murmured Mrs. White into her little daughter’s ear, stooping to kiss her forehead.

Elsa and Alice were already at the nursery door, looking with adoring eyes at the baby, who was stretching out his chubby hands toward the birds.

“We can stay in the living-room just as well, mother dear,” said Betty, patting her baby brother’s cheek affectionately and then quickly leading the way down-stairs.

The living-room had a low ceiling and diamond-paned windows. The large centre-table was covered with books, the chairs were deep and comfortable, and on the wide couch opposite the fireplace lay two great, sleek gray cats curled up, fast asleep.

“What are your cats’ names?” asked Alice, who, not being a near neighbour, did not know so much of Betty’s home and pets as did Elsa.

“Romulus and Remus,” said Betty. “But we must talk about the club.”

“I don’t believe we are going to have any club,” said Elsa, beginning to stroke the cats, who purred in lazy content, without opening their eyes.

“Then it is your own fault,” exclaimed Betty, with a flash of temper.

“Why?” Elsa left off petting the cats and sat up very straight on the sofa.

“Because you give up so soon,” replied Betty.

Elsa suddenly bent low over the cats until her golden hair hid her face, but she made no answer.

“I wish we had some one older to manage for us,” sighed Alice, turning over the pages of a picture-book on the table.

“I tell you what we can do,” cried Betty, jumping up from the black bearskin hearth-rug where she had settled herself momentarily. “We can ask Miss Ruth Warren to be in the club!”

“But will she want to be in a club with little girls?” asked Alice anxiously.

“I think she will,” returned Betty.

“Perhaps she will be president,” suggested Alice, who was a born peacemaker.

“Maybe she will name the club for us,” put in Elsa, raising her head. The flash of sensitiveness had died out of her violet-gray eyes.

“Come on, then! Let’s ask her now,” said Betty; and in another moment the three girls had slipped on their coats and were running toward the Warrens’ house.

The Warren family was a small one now; only Miss Ruth and a maiden aunt lived in the old home-stead. There had always been some one for Ruth Warren to devote herself to,—first her mother, then her grandmother, next her father; and now the last of her older relatives, this aunt who thought herself so much of an invalid that she seldom came down-stairs. Ruth’s brothers and sisters had married and left the old home; but although Ruth had chosen to remain unmarried, she had a busy life and a happy one, with her home cares and housekeeping, and a large number of nephews and nieces to love. There was a touch of sunshine about her that made other people the happier for knowing her. She was pleasant, too, to look upon, for she had beautiful brown eyes and warm-toned yellow hair. She was girlish-looking, in spite of her thirty years, and she always wore soft, graceful, unrustling gowns.

She had just come, this afternoon, from a luncheon-party, and, finding that her aunt had a caller, she seated herself before the open fire in the library, trying to decide whether or not she would go to Mrs. Wharton’s tea, at five o’clock. “I wish there were something more interesting to do,” she said to herself; “luncheons and afternoon teas are all about alike.”

Old Sarah, the family servant, appeared at the library doorway just then. “Well, Sarah?” said Miss Ruth, looking up at the tall, thin, spectacled woman, whose corkscrew-like curls were bobbing with her displeasure.

“Three little girls to see you,” said Sarah, her lips screwing themselves tight together as if in objection to three little girls coming into the house. “And here they are, chasing right after me,” she snapped out, moving to one side.

Betty, who felt quite at home here, had urged the other children into following Sarah to the library.

Miss Ruth rose quickly and went forward to meet them: “Come in, girls,” she said, in a friendly voice. “I am glad to see you.”

“You know Elsa Danforth?” said Betty, in a suddenly shy manner.

“Yes, indeed; Elsa is my neighbour, though she has never been in my house before,” replied Miss Ruth, taking Elsa’s hand into her cordial grasp.

“And this is our little friend, Alice Holt,” said Betty, drawing blue-eyed Alice forward.

“Are you going somewhere?” asked Betty, almost before Miss Ruth had time to greet Alice. “You look all dressed up.”

“No,” said Miss Ruth, deciding instantly that she would not go to Mrs. Wharton’s tea. “I have just come from somewhere. Take off your coats and sit down, girls.”

“We want you to be in our club,” began Betty.

“What kind of a club is it?”

“It is a Christmas Club, for play,” said Betty.

“And work, too,” put in Elsa, shyly, thinking that their play alone might not interest grown-up Miss Ruth.

“Making Christmas presents especially,” said Betty, feeling hopeful.

“For whom?” asked Miss Ruth. She had a way of making people feel comfortable, and she met the children’s request so naturally that they were speedily losing their shyness.

“For our friends,” said Betty.

“We might make things for the children at the Convalescent Home,” suggested Alice, drawing her chair a little nearer.

“What is that?” asked Elsa.

“O, it’s a big, big brick house about a mile from where I live,” explained Alice eagerly; “and children are brought there from the city hospital—children who are getting cured, and they stay there sometimes a long, long while for the country air and the sunshine make them well again. Some of them are on crutches and have bandages all over them and some are fastened to boards.” Alice had talked very fast, and she stopped now, quite out of breath.

“I shouldn’t like to see them,” said Betty, shrugging her shoulders.

“But they are all getting well, even though they do have crutches and boards and bandages,” continued Alice, her blue eyes shining with interest. “Mother takes us children over there once in a while; she says it is good for us, because it makes us more tender-hearted.”

“I don’t believe my grandmother would let me go,” said Elsa, who had been leaning forward, listening intently, with her chin in the palm of her slim little hand. “Grandmother is particular about the children I associate with, and I suppose these are all poor children. I should just love to go, though,” she added, with a long sigh.

“Wouldn’t it be a good plan for our club to make things to give those little children?” asked Betty, growing more interested the more she thought about the children.

“The very thing!” said Miss Ruth. “Miss Hartwell, who is at the head of the Convalescent Home, told me only yesterday that about fifty children are there now. Of course the playthings wear out, and when the children go back to their homes, cured, they want to take with them the toys they have grown fond of. But what have you named your club?” asked Miss Ruth, turning to Betty.

“That’s what we can’t decide about,” said Betty. “We want you to name it and be president.”

“But this is such a great honour!” exclaimed Miss Ruth. Her brown eyes had a way of laughing, even when her face was sober.

“Now, Miss Ruth,—don’t laugh at us, please,” begged Betty, slipping her arm around Miss Ruth’s neck.

“Why not name it the Christmas Makers’ Club,” suggested Miss Ruth, with serious eyes now, “—especially if you decide to make things for the convalescent children?”

“That’s the very best name we could have!” cried Betty, jumping up and clapping her hands.

“Splendid!” exclaimed Alice, two dimples showing in her soft pink cheeks.

“It sounds like all sorts of interesting things,” said Elsa, coming to Miss Ruth’s side and timidly stroking her sleeve.

“We must keep it a secret, though. We mustn’t tell the name to anybody,” said Betty, perching herself on the arm of Miss Ruth’s chair, at the other side. “People will have to know there is a club, but they mustn’t know anything more than that.”

“How will you keep your work a secret?” asked Miss Ruth.

“If you are our president, you might keep the presents we make,” said Elsa.

“Please, O, please!” begged Betty and Alice in a chorus. “Please be president!”

Miss Ruth looked from one to another of the bright, excited faces, for a moment. “I will gladly be your president, and keep your work,—and do anything else you want me to,” she said, finally.

Elsa’s face flushed rosy with pleasure, and she gave little Alice a good hug. Betty dropped a warm kiss on Miss Ruth’s hair and said: “Then come back with us now to my house, because I invited the Club to meet there first.”

Ruth Warren was as good as her word: “I will go where the Club wants me to go,” she said, rising. “First of all, though, let me give you some plum buns which Sarah made this morning.”

“I know old Sarah’s plum buns; they are as good as she is cross,” said Betty, as Miss Ruth left the room.

“That’s not very polite, Betty,” said Alice.

“I don’t care. I am not very polite, anyway,” replied Betty quickly. “I tell the truth, though.”

“That sounds as if you thought other girls didn’t tell the truth!” exclaimed Elsa.

“It is pretty hard to, always,” said Alice slowly. “I try to, but sometimes the fib slips out first, and then it’s all the harder to get the truth out.”

“Mother always catches me if I don’t tell things straight,” confessed Betty.

“Papa used to tell me that the only thing he wanted me to be afraid of was of not telling the truth,” Elsa said, her face growing suddenly sad. Her father had died less than a year ago.

At that moment Miss Ruth came into the room with a large plateful of buns,—crisp and tempting and full of raisins,—and soon all three girls were eating with a relish, as children eat, just after school.

“Come!” said Betty, taking up her coat. “We ought to start.”

Alice and Elsa obligingly put on their coats, but Ruth Warren saw that they hesitated, and Betty as much as the others: there was yet a goodly pile of buns left.

“Fill your pockets, girls,” she said. “Sarah will be disappointed if you don’t eat all the buns.” So the three girls filled their pockets, and Alice said shyly: “I will take one to Ben if you don’t mind. O, thank you!”

“Who is Ben?” inquired Ruth Warren, as with a dark red golf cape over her black lace gown, she started forth with the girls for Betty’s home,—Betty hanging upon one arm, while Elsa and Alice walked on the other side.

“Ben is my twin brother,” Alice replied. “He’s ’most always hungry; mother says boys always are.”

“Three plum buns!” exclaimed Betty. Then she repeated in a comical, sing-song voice:

“Three plum buns!

One for you and one for me,

And one left over:

Give it to the boy who shouts

To scare sheep from the clover.”

“But Ben doesn’t scare sheep from the clover,—because we haven’t any sheep,” said Alice, very earnestly. “All we have is hens.”

“O, Alice,” cried Betty, “that is only poetry.”

“You do have hens then, Alice?” asked Miss Ruth quickly, seeing the child’s face redden.

“Yes, and Ben takes care of them, and he sells the eggs,” answered Alice proudly.

“They have the loveliest place,” said Betty, “a little hens’ house, and they raise lettuce and radishes and all sorts of good things to eat.”

“You see,” cried Alice, feeling that some explanation was necessary, and running a little ahead in her eagerness: “father isn’t very well, and he is a teacher, and he had to go out West for his health, and we can’t afford to go, too, and we all try to help earn money to help, because he doesn’t have much money. Besides Ben’s chickens, mother has a market-garden, and a hired man to help; and I help, too. Perhaps the Club will meet out at my house, sometimes.”

“We will surely have at least one meeting there,” said Miss Ruth, while Elsa’s eyes danced with pleasant anticipations.

Betty hurried ahead, ran up the steps of her home and threw open the door, her heart swelling with hospitality. “O mother!” she exclaimed, for Mrs. White was just passing through the hall; “Miss Ruth is going to belong to our Club!”

“This is good of you, Ruth,” said Mrs. White, greeting her neighbour cordially. “But you must not let the children trespass upon your time.”

Betty looked up in dismay: had they been asking too much of Miss Ruth?

“It will be such a new and refreshing kind of Club that I shall enjoy it,” said Ruth Warren reassuringly.

“It is good for us to dare to be children with children,” said Mrs. White, stroking Elsa’s soft hair and looking into the appealing violet-gray eyes that always brought a thrill of sympathy into her heart for the motherless child.

Elsa, meeting the kind glance, said very earnestly: “We are going to call the Club—”

“O, Elsa, you mustn’t tell! You will spoil it all,” cried Betty impatiently.

“Forgive my little Betty for her interruption, Elsa,” said Mrs. White, seeing the colour rush into Elsa’s face. “Fault-finding is an easy trade, Betty. But I suppose you children will all enjoy your Club more if you keep the name and what you do as a secret.”

Elsa looked up into Mrs. White’s kindly face and wondered if Betty realized how fortunate she was in having such a mother, who understood so well what little girls wanted.

“We are going to make—” began Betty.

“There, Betty, who is telling now!” said Mrs. White laughingly. “I am afraid I shall be learning your secrets if I stay any longer,” she added, turning away. “Be sure you don’t let the children bother you, Ruth.”

“No danger of that,” was the quick reply. And already, indeed, Ruth Warren’s face looked younger and happier. “Now, children, we must make our plans,” she continued, when they were all in the living-room. “It seems to me the meetings would better be at my house. You can come there on your way from school, and I will have everything ready,—our work and something to eat.”

“That will be better than meeting here,” said Betty instantly, “because the other children—Max and Janet—come home from the high school early and they might be around sometimes, and sometimes we should have to keep very quiet on account of the baby.”

“It would be a little nearer our house, too,” said Elsa, “and grandmother could see Miss Ruth’s house from the window, and maybe I could stay later than five o’clock sometimes.”

“And how would you like it, Alice?” asked Ruth Warren, turning to the fair-haired child who was usually the last speaker.

“O, I’d like ever and ever so much to have the Club meet at your house,” said Alice eagerly. “Ben can call for me to go home.”

“Then we have our name settled, and the place where we shall meet,” said Miss Ruth. “Next we must decide what to give the Convalescent Home children for Christmas.”

“Dolls!” cried Betty, from a big, square cushion on the floor.

“Dolls!” echoed Elsa, curled up on the wide sofa beside the two sleepy gray cats.

“Dolls,—different kinds, paper dolls and some rag dolls,” said Alice, her shabby little shoes sticking out straight ahead from the depths of the chair she had chosen.

“Rag dolls!” Betty tossed her head scornfully.

“Yes,—rag dolls, please,” urged Elsa.

“Some rag dolls, surely,” said Miss Ruth; “one of my dearest dolls was a black Dinah with a red dress and yellow ribbons on her woolly hair,—a homely-dear doll my grandmother made for me.”

“Did your grandmother make dolls for you?” asked Elsa in a low voice.

“Yes—but that was probably because somebody had made dolls for her when she was a little girl,” explained Miss Ruth.

“Dolls, then, it’s going to be,” said Betty. “We will all buy some dolls, and make dresses for them ourselves, at the Club meetings.”

Ruth Warren glanced at the children quickly. Elsa was daintily dressed in a soft, black gown with a fine-embroidered white guimpe; Betty had on a pretty blue-and-green Scotch plaid dress, with a simple muslin guimpe: the Danforths and the Whites were well-to-do people. But what about the Holts? The hem of Alice’s sailor-suit had been twice let down,—the careful pressing of the creases could not conceal the fact; her stocking-knees were closely darned, her shoes were shabby; and her story of how all the family worked to help earn money was undoubtedly true. If Betty and Elsa bought dolls, Alice might not be able to buy so many as they. So Miss Ruth said at once: “I will provide the dolls, and you may dress them. Each of you bring some pieces of pretty ginghams and wash-goods to me before next Friday, and I will have the dresses cut out and ready for you to begin on when you come to the Club meeting. Do you think you can make dresses for as many as two dozen dolls in all,—twenty-four dolls that will be, and eight apiece for you?”

“O, yes, yes!” came the chorus of answers.

“Then, sometime when the Club is sewing and we are tired of talking, I will tell you a story about a little old lady’s doll,” said Miss Ruth.

“O, tell it now!” urged Betty.

“Please!” “Please!” begged Elsa and Alice.

“The next time, perhaps,” said Miss Ruth, glancing up at the clock, whose hour-hand was fast approaching five, and shaking her head at Betty’s added “Please!”

“Don’t you think we ought to have a few boy dolls?” asked Alice. “Some of the convalescent children are boys, and Ben likes my boy dolls best.”

“Does Ben play with dolls?” asked Betty scornfully, rattling the tongs by the fireside.

“He used to when he was littler,” said Alice, “and he does sometimes now, when he has the sore throat and has to stay in the house. He doesn’t mind other boys knowing it, either,” she said, sitting up very straight in the deep chair, her blue eyes beaming with pride; “one of the boys teased him about it, and Ben ducked him into the frog-pond. Ben is different from other boys,” Alice explained, turning to Miss Ruth. “I think he would like to come to the Club sometimes.”

“We don’t want boys in our Club,” objected Betty, rising and walking around the room.

“But Ben isn’t like other boys,” said Elsa from her corner with the cats.

“Ben could often help us,” said Miss Ruth encouragingly; “there will be ever so much that a boy can do, especially toward Christmas-time.”

“Ben can sew, too,” said loyal Alice. She loved her twin brother heartily and wanted to have him in all her good times.

“Here comes Ben, now,” exclaimed Betty, catching sight of him from the window.

“He said he would call for me about five o’clock,” cried Alice, running with Betty to the front door.

Back they came in a moment, followed by a rosy-cheeked boy, taller than Alice but looking very much like her except that his big blue eyes sparkled with fun, while hers were dreamy and rather serious. Ben had on a short reefer jacket and knee trousers. In his red-mittened hands he held the round cap which he had pulled off from his close-cropped yellow hair.

“This is my twin brother,” said Alice, leading him forward to Miss Ruth.

“My name is Benjamin Franklin Holt,” said the boy, hastily pulling off his right-hand red mitten. His cheeks grew rosier than ever, as he bowed and shook hands with Miss Ruth, but he kept his eyes on her face in a manly fashion.

Ruth Warren liked the little fellow from that moment for his straightforward look. “We are glad to see you, Ben,” she said, “and we were just talking about your coming to the Club sometimes.”

“Are you going to have a Club? I might come when there isn’t anything else to do,” said Ben cheerfully.

“Ben!” exclaimed his sister.

“All right, Peggy. Yes, ma’am, thank you, I’d like to come sometimes.” Ben edged over to the sofa. The two gray cats jumped down when he began stroking them, and rubbed against his legs.

“Ben loves animals,” said Alice, with shining eyes.

“Alice told us you like to play dolls,” said Betty teasingly.

“I do, sometimes, when there isn’t anything better to do,” said Ben. He gave a funny side-glance at Miss Ruth out of his twinkling eyes as he added, straightening up his fine, sturdy little figure: “I ducked a boy in the frog-pond once for trying to tease me about dolls.”

Ruth Warren’s eyes laughed back into Ben’s, but she said very seriously: “I am sure you would not treat any of your sister’s friends in ungallant fashion.”

“That’s the trouble about girls,” replied Ben confidentially; “a boy can’t ever play fair with them, because they are girls.” One of the things which always delighted people with Ben was his extremely friendly and wise manner.

“You have not asked the name of our Club, Ben,” suggested Miss Ruth.

“Don’t tell him, please, until he really joins,” urged Betty.

“That will be time enough,” said Ben, carelessly but sweet-temperedly.

“I must go this minute!” cried Elsa, jumping up from the sofa and hurriedly putting on her coat, as the clock struck five. “Good-bye! good-bye! I’ve had a beautiful time. Thank you, Miss Ruth!” she called back as she darted out of the house.

Betty White’s musical voice—which seemed to belong with the shining brown hair and the fearless eyes—followed Miss Ruth and the Holt twins as they made their way down the front steps a few moments later: “We will run straight home from school to your house, Miss Ruth, for the Club meeting next Friday afternoon; and don’t forget the story.”

Alice and Ben walked the short distance homeward with Miss Ruth. Happy Alice chattered away about the Club: “I am so glad it is really started,” she said gleefully, as they stopped at the foot of the Warrens’ door-steps.

Ben whipped off his cap and stood bareheaded, looking up into Ruth Warren’s face. Something friendly in her eyes made him say: “You look as if you liked boys, Black Lace Lady.”

“I do like boys, Ben,” said Miss Ruth; and from that moment she and Ben were friends.

Ben, while she spoke, had been pulling Alice by the hand. “Come on, Peggy,” he cried now.

But Alice hung back long enough to call out: “Ben always has names for people. Good-bye!” Then the twins ran off together, hand in hand.

At half-past five Elsa Danforth sat at a side-table in the dining-room bay-window eating her bread-and-milk supper out of a gold-lined silver porringer. The soft light from the great, glowing chandelier in the dining-room fell upon the beautiful flowering plants and upon the little black-gowned figure sitting there among them, all alone. Elsa had begged the maid to leave the shades up,—it grew dark early these short November days,—and she glanced out every now and then through the twilight at the Warren house with happy thoughts in her heart. She almost felt as if she had company, for the house was so near and Miss Ruth had been so kind that afternoon.

Mrs. Danforth, the tall, stately lady whom Elsa called “grandmother”—never “grandmamma”—dined at half-past six, for, notwithstanding the solitude of her life since her husband, Judge Danforth, had died and she had come to live in this suburban town of Berkeley, she chose to keep up the formal New York way of living. She had late breakfasts always, so that when Elsa was attending school, the only times the two saw one another for more than a few moments were at luncheon, in the evening after Mrs. Danforth’s dinner was over and before Elsa’s bedtime, and on Sunday.

Elsa often felt very lonely, especially eating by herself. But she never complained; she never thought herself very large or important, and she was quite used to obeying her grandmother. Uncle Ned had said for her to do exactly as her grandmother wanted her to do; and if Uncle Ned had said this, it must be all right.

“Who are the children in your Club, Elsa, beside Elizabeth White?” asked Mrs. Danforth that evening. She and Elsa were sitting in the luxurious library. The chairs were upholstered in dark green velvet, the books on the tables and in the bookcases had rich bindings. Out of the library opened a long drawing-room furnished in cream colour and gold, and having beautiful inlaid cabinets full of treasures.

Mrs. Danforth was a handsome woman, very erect, with a broad white forehead, gray hair, heavy dark eyebrows, and keen blue eyes. She was dressed in a corded black silk, richly trimmed with lace and jet.

Elsa looked up from her book and answered: “The other member of the Club is Alice, and maybe her brother Ben is coming sometimes, grandmother.”

“What is their last name?” asked the grandmother quickly.

“Alice and Ben Bolt,” said Elsa.

“Nonsense, child,” replied Mrs. Danforth: she had a discouraging way of saying “Nonsense!” that made Elsa feel like a very small and silly child; “those are names from an old nursery ballad.”

“I am sure their names are Alice and Ben, anyway, grandmother,” said Elsa, pushing back the silky hair which had dropped forward, and looking steadily at her grandmother out of great, wide-open eyes.

“Probably those are not their real names,” replied Mrs. Danforth. She seemed rather troubled about something, Elsa thought. And then the child tried to remember if she had done anything her grandmother did not like.

Later, just before Elsa’s bedtime, Mrs. Danforth asked again: “What is the last name of the children you call Alice and Ben?”

“Bolt, or Holt, or Colt may be; I can’t remember,” answered Elsa, looking up from the pages of the “Swiss Family Robinson” and hoping her grandmother would not notice that the mantel clock was striking eight.

“Where do they live?”

“O, a mile away,” said Elsa. “And they have hens and a garden, and they raise radishes for the city market.”

“Are you sure they are proper children for you to associate with?”

“O, yes, grandmother,” said Elsa warmly. “Alice, especially, has beautiful manners; Betty says her mother especially likes to have her play with Alice.”

“I must speak to Mrs. White about it, to make sure,” said Mrs. Danforth, and Elsa’s face coloured sensitively, for she felt that her grandmother thought she was not telling the truth.

“Bedtime now, Elsa,” said Mrs. Danforth, the next moment. “Put away your book. And try to remember people’s names. It is something a lady always does.”

“Yes, grandmother,” said Elsa dutifully.

Almost any one, looking on, would have been surprised to see Elsa walk up to her grandmother and, instead of kissing her good night, put out her hand; and then to see Mrs. Danforth touch the slender, childlike hand for only a brief second with the tips of her jewelled fingers. But Elsa understood; long ago her grandmother had explained that she thought kissing was an unnecessary and foolish custom.

“Good night, Elsa. Remember to say your prayers.”

“Yes, grandmother. Good night.”

Elsa went slowly out of the room and up the polished stairs to her own room, which always seemed empty to her, with its white-papered walls, white bed, white furniture, curtains, even white frames on the pictures of Greek statuary and ruined temples.

Mrs. Danforth never thought of tucking Elsa into bed; and the child, as she hung her black dress over the chair to-night, shed a few tears—as she often did—over having to go to bed all alone in that white, white room where her little black dresses looked so black.

It seemed to Elsa that she had been wearing black dresses all her life. Three years ago her mother had died, then a year later her grandfather, Judge Danforth, died, and within the last twelve months, her father. Since her father’s death, her own pretty home had been broken up, her old nurse dismissed, and she had lived with her grandmother, at first in the great New York house, and now for three months amid new surroundings in Berkeley.

No wonder that the grief and the many changes and now the sober, quiet life with her grandmother in a new place, had made Elsa a sad-eyed, white-faced child. The late summer, after their coming to Berkeley, had been particularly lonely, for there had been nobody to play with. Since October, however, when the Whites had come back from their summer home, Elsa had been happier. Betty as near neighbour, had become Elsa’s special friend, and now she and Alice had also made friends.

When Elsa was ready for bed, in her long white nightgown, she turned off the electric light, put up the window-shades, and looked out toward the Warren house. “I wonder which is Miss Ruth’s room,” she whispered to herself. “Wish I dared to ask her, because if it’s on this side, I could look over sometimes, and feel as if I had company.”

With a little sigh, Elsa knelt down by her white bed and mumbled her prayer. Then, jumping up from her knees, she listened at the door. Not a sound from Cummings, her grandmother’s maid, who had the room next to Elsa’s, and who usually stayed down in the servants’ dining-room until nine o’clock. Everything was quiet. So Elsa went quickly over to the white bureau and pulling open the lower drawer, took from under a pile of playthings a rather small china doll in a faded pink dress, the red of whose cheeks had been almost entirely kissed off. With this doll hugged close in her arms, Elsa crept into bed.

On the white-cushioned couch between the windows sat a dignified row of dolls, seven in all, and all in good clothes. But better than any of these, Elsa loved her little old china doll which her own dear nurse had given her at parting and which Elsa had named for her nurse, Bettina. For some reason which Elsa did not try to explain to herself, she kept Bettina from the sight of her grandmother and especially from Cummings, the middle-aged woman who attended to Mrs. Danforth’s wardrobe and in what time there was left, made dresses for Elsa. Every morning when Elsa woke, the first thing she did, after pressing many loving kisses upon Bettina’s worn face, was to put her away under the pile of playthings in the lower drawer of the bureau.

Thinking about the Club made Elsa feel very wide awake. She began picturing to herself Betty White’s nursery-room with the bright scarlet geraniums, the strawberry-birds, and the pretty chintz cushions; and she hugged her doll the closer to take away the feeling of loneliness in her own dreary white room.

“Now, listen, Bettina, and try to learn our verses; and perhaps we can go to sleep,” said Elsa, beginning to whisper softly the cradle-song her father had taught her, not long before he died. Repeating these three verses every night meant more to Elsa than the prayer which she hurried through on her knees. And Bettina listened attentively, as dolls listen, while a voice said close to her ears:

“Dear Heart, Sweet Heart,

Time that little children

Creep into their mothers’ arms, to wait Sleep’s silent call;

Sweet Heart, Dear Heart,

All the little children

Must the Moon find sleeping when she mounts Heaven’s wall!

“Sweet Heart, Dear Heart,

Over little children,

As they dream their white, white dreams, the wings of Love are pressed;

Dear Heart, Sweet Heart,

They were little children

Whom the blessèd Child of Bethlehem lovèd best!

“Dear Heart, Sweet Heart,

All the little children

Come from Love, and go to Love, when life’s long day is done;

Sweet Heart, Dear Heart,

All are little children,

Hushed at last, on Nature’s bosom, one by one!”

And, as usually happened, when Elsa had said the last words, she fell fast asleep.

Down-stairs, Mrs. Danforth, putting aside her book, sat a long time deep in thought, her eyes shaded from the light. “Ben and Alice; Alice and Ben!” she kept repeating to herself. “Strange,—and the name, too, Holt, or Bolt;—yet it may be only that foolish old song. I must find out about it all.”

Finally, being a woman of strong will, she put the matter out of her mind, leaned back into the luxurious chair and went on reading her novel; while up-stairs, Elsa, the child who bore no shadow of resemblance to her in looks or ways, fell asleep with wet eyelashes.

Mrs. Danforth had every intention of being kind to Elsa. She provided suitable and pretty frocks and the daintiest of underwear for the child; she paid careful attention to Elsa’s education, her manners and her companions. The one thing she failed to give the child was the unbounded love which little fatherless and motherless Elsa needed more than anything else in the world.

In many ways Mrs. Danforth was proud of Elsa,—proud of her straight, naturally graceful figure, her spirited bearing, her wonderfully beautiful hair and eyes. Mrs. Danforth was a proud woman, and she enjoyed the thought that the little girl whom she called grandchild was well worthy of the name. She had never really cared for any child except her own daughter; but that was a sad story of long ago.

There was a definite reason why Mrs. Danforth did not give more affection to Elsa, just as there was a definite purpose back of her coming to live in Berkeley. This purpose, however, Mrs. Danforth was slow in carrying out, being a proud-spirited woman. To her many New York friends she explained her removal to Berkeley upon the ground that the quiet, suburban town, with its cultured people and its good schools, was a better place than New York City for Elsa to live in during the years of her young girlhood.

CHAPTER II
PRINCE GRAY OWL

Forth he set in the breezy morn,

Across green fields of nodding corn,

As goodly a Prince as ever was born.

—Christina Rossetti.

Where every wind and leaf can talk,

But no man understand

Save one whose child-feet chanced to walk

Green paths of fairyland.

—Sophie Jewett.

“THE children are late,” said Miss Ruth to Sarah who, soon after three o’clock the next Friday afternoon, came into the library with a large plate piled high with ginger cookies cut into shapes of animals,—horses, cats, dogs, giraffes, and elephants.

“Like as not they have given up wantin’ to have a club,” snapped Sarah, shutting her mouth as if she had bitten off the words. “Children nowadays are spoilt with havin’ such a lot done for ’em.” Sarah looked disappointed, however; she had spent a long time in making those cookies.

Sarah Judd was the only servant in the Warren household, and she had lived in the family a long time. Whenever Ruth Warren said anything to her about having a younger woman to help, Sarah always shook her head until the corkscrew side-curls fairly bobbed up and down and answered: “No, madam: if you have anybody else come to work for you, I go!” As old Sarah understood perfectly the ways and wishes of Miss Virginia Warren, Ruth’s aunt, Ruth kept the cross-spoken servant, who was in reality a kind-hearted woman.

Ruth Warren had learned the wisdom of silence when Sarah made scolding remarks; so now she kept on cutting out dresses for the rows and rows of dolls,—big and little dolls, blond-haired and black-haired, waxen-headed and china-headed, blue-eyed, gray-eyed, black-eyed,—two of each kind and twenty-four in all, lying there on the centre-table.

Sarah lingered in the room, brushing a little dust from the table with the corner of her white apron. “What a handsome lot of doll-babies,” she said after a moment; “I hope the children will come. I thought at first that havin’ ’em come would make an awful sight of dust an’ crumbs; but I can sweep Saturday mornin’s instead of Fridays, an’ it’s kinder nice to hear children ’round, a-talkin’ an’ a-laughin’, as fast as a sewin’-machine. Bless my heart, here they come now, a-hurryin’ along!” Sarah dodged behind the curtain and looked out over the tops of her spectacles. “Ain’t they cunnin’ little things!” she exclaimed, “comin’ along with their arms twined ’round one another, an’ that lively Betty White in the middle!”

As Sarah turned from behind the window-curtain to answer the quick ring of the front door-bell, she said anxiously: “If they eat all the animals in the plate, I have got some more plain cookies they can have.”

A moment later Sarah led the three girls into the library, her side-curls bobbing with excitement.

“O, look at those cookies!” cried Betty, after she had greeted Miss Ruth. “Good old Sarah must have made them.” And Sarah vanished from the doorway with a smile which made her thin, dry face seem suddenly to have cracked.

“I’m dreadfully sorry we are late, Miss Ruth,” Betty cried out, excitedly—Betty was almost always the first to begin talking. “It is all my fault—I had to stay after school, and Elsa and Alice waited for me.” Betty stopped for breath, fanning herself with the skirt of her blue and green plaid gown.

“We wanted to wait,” said Alice with a shy, half-look at Miss Ruth, then turning quickly to examine the piles of dolls again, with Elsa.

“I got zero in arithmetic,” Betty rattled on again, “and I didn’t read well, and I got caught whispering, so I had to eat three little bitter blossoms and stay fifteen minutes after school. I wish there wasn’t any school,” she added, with a toss of her brown hair.

“So do I,” agreed Elsa, promptly, but Alice looked a little shocked.

“Help yourselves to the cookies, girls; Sarah made them especially for you,” said Miss Ruth, seeing Betty’s and Elsa’s eyes fixed upon the gingerbread animals.

“I shouldn’t care if I didn’t know anything, if I could have people read to me and tell me stories,” said Betty, biting off the trunk of an elephant cookie.

“O, Miss Ruth, you said you would tell us a story!” exclaimed Elsa, eagerly.

“Yes,—a story about a doll and an old lady,” cried Betty, forgetting her school troubles.

“Wasn’t it strange for an old lady to have a doll?” said Alice, her blue eyes very serious.

“Strange perhaps, but true,” replied Miss Ruth, who had taken the tongs and was stirring the fire into a splendid blaze. “Which would you rather have,—that story, or one about a ‘Prince Gray Owl?’”

“Both,” answered Betty, “but the gray owl story first.”

“The doll story first, please,” begged Elsa. The fire lighted up the golden-brown of Miss Ruth’s gown, and its brown fur trimming; Elsa decided that the fur just matched the colour of Miss Ruth’s eyes.

“I should like either story first,—only both please,” said Alice slowly, between bites at a long-necked giraffe.

“Which one can you tell easiest, Miss Ruth?” Elsa suddenly remembered to ask.

“I could tell the fairy story more easily to-day, perhaps, because I told it only yesterday to my little niece who was visiting me. The old lady’s doll story actually happened, so that I remember it better.”

“Then the fairy story first, please,” Elsa said, contentedly. She had one of the little dolls in her arms.

“Didn’t the fairy story really happen, too?” Alice asked quickly. She had chosen from among the dolls a blue-eyed, yellow-haired one that looked very much like herself.

“What a silly question, Baby Alice,” cried Betty. “Of course fairy stories aren’t true.”

“What makes you like fairy stories, Betty, if they are not true?” Elsa asked, seeing that Alice looked hurt.

“Because fairies are so dear and kind that it makes you wish they were true,” Betty replied.

“Fairy stories were true in the once-upon-a-time days,” said Miss Ruth, to end the discussion; “that is, people believed in fairies,” she added.

“Are these the dresses for us to make, all pinned on to the dolls, Miss Ruth?” Elsa asked. “We’ve talked so much about other things that we haven’t said hardly anything about the dolls.”

“It’s nice to have their underclothes all made,” said Betty, “because it saves so much of our time.” Betty had finally taken one of the largest dolls to dress.

“Do you each want to dress first the one you have chosen?” asked Miss Ruth.

“Yes!” “Yes!” was the quick chorus.

“Then you may begin now, and I will sew, too,” said Miss Ruth, seating herself by the table. “Here is a thimble for each of you, and in this big work-basket you will find needles and sewing cotton and scissors. Help yourselves to the cookies: and you need not be extra careful about crumbs, because Sarah is going to sweep the library to-morrow morning.”

The three girls grouped themselves near the table and threaded their needles.

“Please begin,” Betty whispered, just as Miss Ruth was asking of Alice: “Is Ben coming to the Club?”

“He wanted to, he told me,” said Alice, “but the other boys teased him to go skating, ’cause Morse’s Pond is frozen over.”

Betty tossed her head: “I knew he didn’t want to belong.”

“He told me he did,” said Elsa, who, being sensitive herself, usually knew when Alice’s feelings were hurt. Elsa’s eyes were shining with pleasure: it was only half-past three o’clock, there was an hour and a half of enjoyment ahead, with dolls’ dresses all ready to make, ginger cookies to eat, and a fairy story to hear. The bright wood-fire sparkling and crackling added to the cheer. Her eyes were dark like purple pansies as she raised them, expectantly, to Miss Ruth.

“Now that we are all ready,” said Miss Ruth, “I will begin. Prince Gray Owl is the name of the story.”

“Was the Gray Owl really a prince?” asked Alice.

“Hush!” said Betty.

Once upon a time,—began Miss Ruth,—there was a beautiful princess who lived in a great gray castle with her uncle. The castle and the kingdom belonged to the princess, but as the king, her father, and the queen, her mother, were dead, her uncle ruled over the kingdom.

Princess Katrina was only ten years old when her father and mother died. As the years went on, her uncle liked better and better to be king, and did not want to give up the position. But he knew that when Princess Katrina married, he could no longer be king, because her husband would become the ruler. Many a brave young prince wanted to marry the princess, whose great beauty and cheerful heart were famed throughout the world. But the uncle said “No” to each one of these suitors, and ordered them never to come into the kingdom again on penalty of having their heads cut off.

Princess Katrina was now nineteen years old. Her uncle knew that if she were not married before she was twenty-one, she could then choose a husband for herself. So he arranged to have her marry, not a prince, but a wicked old king, ruler of a far-off country, two days’ journey beyond the sunset. The uncle agreed to give this bad man a large sum of gold with the princess, and in return, the uncle was to keep the kingdom. For the far-away king wanted gold more than he did land.

Early one September morning Katrina’s uncle came to the sunshiny bower where she sat alone, embroidering a beautiful scarlet-and-gold tapestry. The princess made a beautiful picture, there in the sunshine, with her soft hair shining like spun gold, her clear blue eyes, and her fair cheeks tinged with rose colour. She looked a royal princess indeed, in her blue velvet gown, with a long scarf of light blue gauze floating over her shoulders.

“Good morning, Uncle Wulfred,” said the princess. She was not very fond of her uncle, but she always greeted him kindly.

The wicked uncle had a crafty and cruel face. The jewelled gold crown came almost down to the ears of his small, round head, and the kingly, ermine-trimmed green velvet robe hung loosely from his short, stooping figure.

“Princess niece,” said the uncle, without any “Good morning” greeting, “you are now over nineteen years old and it is time you were married, so I have chosen a husband for you. King Rupert from the land two days’ journey beyond the sunset is coming at the end of a month to marry you.”

Princess Katrina’s happy, beautiful face turned very pale. “Do you mean that cross, unkind old king who visited you a six-month ago and who one day at banquet broke the neck of a poor, faithful hound who offended him? Nay, Uncle Wulfred, I will not marry such a man.”

“I say you shall marry him,” stormed the uncle, walking up and down the room with jingling spurs.

“Never! I will die first!” cried the princess. Rising suddenly in front of her uncle, she faced him with white cheeks and flashing eyes. The scarlet-and-gold tapestry fell from her hands to the floor.

“You shall marry King Rupert, or die!” the uncle shouted; his small eyes snapped angrily, his face grew purple, and he brought his steel-gloved hand down upon the table so heavily that the embroidery bodkins and scissors rolled off, clattering, to the floor. “This-very-morning,” he said so fast that the words almost tumbled over each other, “I-will-shut-you-up-in-the-East-Tower. At-the-end-of-a-week-I-will-come-to-ask-if-you-will-marry-King-Rupert. If-you-refuse-to-mind-me, I-will-put-you-where-you-will-have-a-harder-time, the-second-week.”

When her uncle stopped, purple in the face, to take breath, Princess Katrina answered him scornfully and without fear: “You are a wicked uncle. It is because you want to keep my kingdom that you are trying to make me marry that cruel old king, who lives far away.”

At these words, the uncle grew more angry than ever, because they were the truth. He stamped heavily with his right foot three times upon the stone floor.

Instantly three tall men in black robes, with black masks over their faces, rushed into Katrina’s bower. One of the men pushed back from the doorway Katrina’s old nurse who lived with the princess now as serving-woman. Quickly throwing a part of his black robe over the head of the gray-haired woman, the man led her away.

“Make the princess a prisoner!” commanded the uncle, pointing with his sword at Katrina, who did not move or even cry out.

The two men in black seized Katrina roughly by the shoulders.

“Take this disobedient girl to the East Tower!” roared the angry uncle.

Katrina did not speak, but her blue eyes gleamed proudly as the guards led her away.

The East Tower was an old, unused part of the castle, a long distance from the part where the royal household lived. To reach the tower, the guards led Katrina through many rooms hung with spiders’ webs, over broken stone floors, and along dark passage-ways where rats scuttled.

“I am glad I wasn’t Katrina to have to go where there were rats!” exclaimed Alice.

“Don’t interrupt, Peggy!” cried Betty.

Miss Ruth smiled, and continued:

The old East Tower of the castle was almost forgotten. No one ever went there. Tall trees and bushes grew up around it, and a deep moat surrounded it.

“What is a moat?” asked Betty.

“A deep hollow, like a trench or a wide ditch, filled with water,” explained Miss Ruth, and Alice whispered—but very sweet-temperedly—to Betty: “Who’s interrupting now?” as Miss Ruth began again:

The land beyond the East Tower, across the moat, belonged to a neighbouring king, who had been away at war for many years. No lonelier place than the tower could have been found for a prison.

“A safe place for the girl,” said the false king to his wicked counsellors when they came back and told him they had locked Princess Katrina into the upper room of the tower.

“But suppose she dies there?” said one of the counsellors, who had a daughter at home, of about Katrina’s age.

“If she dies, no one will be the wiser, and you will be rich men,” said the king. “Be sure you keep the old nurse drugged, and a guard to watch her.”

After that, when the royal ladies of the court asked King Wulfred where the princess was, he told them she had been suddenly called away by the illness of her aunt in another kingdom, and that the old nurse had gone with the princess.

Katrina was very lonely and sad the first few days in the round upper room of the old stone tower. Three times each day the strong door was unlocked and food and candles were set into the room. The man who brought the food and the three candles would not say a word in answer to Katrina’s questions. In the daytime, the princess walked around the room, looking from one after another of the three windows at the trees outside. When night came, she put all three of her candles at the window where the leaves of the trees seemed thinnest, hoping that some one passing might see the light, and wonder at its being there in the old, deserted tower, and so come to her rescue.

On the third day, the princess saw the bright eyes of a gray squirrel looking in at the window; she put some food upon the window-sill, and presently the squirrel came in through the iron bars, ate the food, then sat up on his haunches and looked at her quite fearlessly.

“I would help you if I could,” said the gray squirrel, unexpectedly, “but all I can do is to give you my company.”

Katrina was greatly surprised to hear the squirrel speak, but she answered quickly: “If you will talk with me sometimes that will help me, for I am so lonely.”

“I will come every day,” he replied. “Now I must go home to arrange my engagements.” Straightening out his splendid bushy tail, he jumped from the window-sill into the thick leaves of an oak-tree, out of sight, like a flash.

After that, the gray squirrel came every day at exactly the same time. He sat on Katrina’s shoulder and chattered about his busy life in the great forest; and in turn Katrina told him about her being shut up in the tower by her cruel uncle.

“I would help you if I could,” said the squirrel one day, growing so angry over her imprisonment that he tried to bite the iron bars of the window, and in doing so, broke off two of his best front teeth. From that time, Princess Katrina gave him more of her food, because he could not crack nuts so well now. “Elf will mend my teeth some day, elf will mend them,” said the squirrel cheerfully.

On the afternoon of the seventh day, the cruel uncle unlocked the door of the tower-room and stood before the princess. He was covered with dust and cobwebs from coming through the unused rooms and dark passages which led to the tower.

“Is my dear niece ready to obey me and marry King Rupert?” the uncle asked in a make-believe anxious voice.

Princess Katrina held up her head courageously. “Never!” she said: “I will never consent to marry that dreadful old man.” Her golden hair gleamed like sunshine against the dark gray stone walls.

She was so brave and fair standing there in her royal blue velvet gown, facing him, that her uncle was half afraid. “It is for your good,” he said in a shaking voice, the keys jingling in his hand.

Katrina answered him quickly: “It is for your gain.”

Then the uncle cried out fast, with blazing eyes: “This-next-week-you-shall-live-in-the-lower-room-and-have-food-only-twice-a-day-and-only-two-candles-for-the-night. At-the-end-of-a-week-I-will-visit-you-and-if-you-refuse-to-marry-King-Rupert-I-will-put-you-where-you-have-a-harder-time.” Seizing her wrist, he dragged her roughly behind him through the door and down the narrow, winding stone steps to the room below, thrust her into it, and locked the creaking, heavy door upon her.

That night Princess Katrina was dreadfully afraid. A wild storm of wind and rain shook the tower and made her candle-light flicker. Once when something gray brushed against the window she shrieked aloud; but, watching, she saw that the gray object stopped on a branch of the great oak-tree outside the window, and that it was a large, soft owl, as tall as a man. The owl sat there a long time, staring at the candle-light with blinking yellow eyes that had tiny black spots at their centre, and the princess was comforted by the sense of companionship.

The next morning when the food and candles were brought, a package was put with them, inside the door.

Katrina hurriedly unwrapped the package and was overjoyed to find in it her scarlet-and-gold tapestry, her bodkins, her skeins of scarlet and gold embroidery silk, and a little paper cleverly sewed on the very place where she had stopped her work the morning when her uncle came into her bower. On the paper was written, in her old nurse’s handwriting: “The counsellors kept me drugged for a week, then they told me you had gone away. I did not believe them, and I bribed the guard, with all the gold I had, to tell me where you are and to takes these things to you. Keep a good heart. I go away from the castle to help you.”

When the gray squirrel came, early that afternoon, Katrina told him what had happened and asked him what he thought.

The gray squirrel sat up very still and looked at the princess out of his round black eyes: “The gray owl will rescue you,” said the squirrel at last, solemnly.

“Who told you so?” asked the princess.

“I heard the bluejays talking about it this morning,” he said, winking his eyes rapidly.

“Who told the bluejays?” Katrina inquired.

“They are great gossips: they hear things by listening at the front doors of the other birds’ homes.” The squirrel looked so fierce all at once that the princess asked quickly: “Do you know the gray owl?” and before the squirrel could answer, began telling him about the gray owl she had seen outside her window the night before. “Do you know him?” she asked again.

“I know some gray owls,—I am sorry to say,” replied the squirrel, shaking his tail.

The princess opened her blue eyes very wide as she asked, “Why are you sorry?”

“Squirrels and owls cannot be friendly,” said the gray squirrel rather sadly.

“Why?” asked the princess.

“Because it has always been so,” he answered, whisking his tail excitedly and jumping out of the window so that the princess could not ask him any more questions.

That afternoon as Katrina began embroidering once more upon her scarlet-and-gold tapestry, her thoughts were even busier than her fingers. What did her nurse mean by writing that puzzling sentence: “I go away from the castle to help you?” Over and over again, Katrina turned these words in her mind. But she felt comforted and hopeful.

When darkness fell, the princess put her two candles at the window, and said to herself: “Perhaps the gray owl will come again to the oak-tree.” For a long time she waited with her tender face pressed against the iron bars. By and by she heard a soft whirr-r of wings, and the gray owl settled upon a branch below the window.

Katrina looked eagerly into the round, blinking eyes: “I wish you could speak,” she said, half-aloud.

The gray owl stepped so near the light that the little black line almost faded out of his yellow eyes. Katrina was surprised at the owl’s great size, and even more surprised to hear a muffled voice say: “Keep a good heart. I will save you.” Then the owl spread its soft wings and flew noiselessly away.

It was soon after that the princess heard a faint, regular sound, as of iron striking against stone; and the sound lasted all night,—as long as she stayed awake, which was a long time, for she kept asking herself over and over again: “Will the gray owl really save me from this dungeon?” The squirrel had said the owl would do this, and now the owl himself said so.

In the days of Princess Katrina, the world of mankind had not moved very far away from fairyland. The princess was not half so much astonished to hear a squirrel and an owl speak as a princess would be to-day. Katrina’s old nurse had told her many a tale of wonder; the nurse had that very day sent the message, “Keep a good heart;” and the gray owl had repeated the same words, “Keep a good heart.” By and by Katrina fell asleep, still puzzled, but happy in having such good friends as the nurse, the squirrel and the owl.

The next morning, when the squirrel came as usual, Katrina asked his opinion about the owl and the strange noise; but all the squirrel would say was: “Owls are very strong. Owls have sharp, strong beaks.” Then he whisked away, as if in haste. So Katrina stopped talking to the squirrel about the owl after that, for the subject seemed to offend him.

Every night, regularly, when darkness fell, Katrina heard the faint pick! pick! of iron upon stone, and every night, as she leaned against the window-bars, after the pick! pick! began, she heard the muffled words, “Keep a good heart!” She did not always see the owl, but on those nights she thought the owl must have perched upon a branch much lower than her window, for, straining her eyes, she could see a gray shape below.

When the end of the second week came, Katrina wound the scarlet and gold tapestry around her slender body, under her blue velvet gown, so that her uncle should not see it. All day long she waited for him, but he did not come until dusk. The key turned slowly in the rusty lock. Her uncle stood before her.

“Girl! Katrina!” he shouted, for he was frightened by her white face. “Have you come to your senses? Are you ready to marry King Rupert?”

“Never! I will never marry King Rupert,” Katrina answered, looking at her uncle with flashing blue eyes so like those of his dead brother, her father, that the uncle swore a terrible oath to keep up his courage, and said very fast, though his teeth chattered: “Down—to—the—dungeon—with—you! Food—only—once—a—day. One—small—candle—for—the—night. Be—ready—to—marry—King—Rupert—at—the—end—of—a—week—or—you—will—have—a—harder—time.”

With trembling hands the coward uncle put a key into a keyhole in the floor, raised a trap-door by an iron ring, and pushed Katrina down the dark stairs. She lifted her white face bravely and said: “Never will I do your bidding;” then the trap-door closed over her head.

Down into the darkness the beautiful princess felt her way. After a few moments she could see, by the dim light that came in from the one window, a rough wooden bench, a stool, and a pile of dry leaves in one corner. Outside the window, the oak leaves were very thick. Katrina reached through the iron bars and broke the leaves from the nearest branches. The strong stems hurt her hands, but she gained a little more light and air.

Before the dim twilight faded away, brave Katrina stirred the dry leaves on the stone floor and found to her great comfort that there were no creeping things underneath. After putting her scarlet-and-gold tapestry over the leaves to make a bed for herself, she lighted her one candle, and placing it upon the wooden bench before the window, sat down beside it. Darkness had hardly fallen before she heard the pick! pick! as of iron upon stone, and lo! the sounds seemed close at her side.

Suppose the sounds were some plan of her uncle’s to frighten her? For a moment Katrina’s courage sank at the thought. But just then she heard a muffled voice ask: “Are you there, Princess?”

“Yes,” she answered faintly. “Who are you?” The dungeon walls were thicker than the walls above; Katrina could only press so near the window as to see a gray figure outside.

“Your friend, the Gray Owl,” said the low voice. “We must not talk much, for fear some one hear us. But keep a good heart.”

Each day of that third week the princess worked a little while with the shining gold silk upon the tapestry; it was so dark in the dungeon that she could not see, even at noonday, to use the scarlet silk. She felt very faint, because she had only one meal a day, of bread and water, and she gave some of the bread to her daily visitor, the squirrel, who grew very thin without his usual nuts. She begged him every day to go to the elf and have his teeth mended, but he always answered: “It is a long way, and I will not go until you are saved.”

On the fifth night of that week when the pick! pick! as of iron upon stone began, the princess went to the window and whispered sadly: “I cannot keep heart much longer,” and the low, muffled voice of the gray owl answered: “Courage! keep a good heart for one day more.”

Upon the sixth day there was a dark tempest. Even at high noon the dungeon was dark. The gray squirrel looked wet and discouraged when he sprang in through the window at the usual time.

“Do you think the gray owl is going to save me?” asked the princess in her despair.

At the mention of the gray owl, the squirrel jumped for the window, but it was so dark in the dungeon that he bumped into the wall and fell upon the stone floor.

He held up a hurt front paw as Katrina ran to him. “Will you bind it with silk for me?” he asked. “Elf will mend it when I go to him, elf will mend it. But I shall have to stay with you now, because I cannot jump—nor even walk,” he said, trying to rise but falling over again.

Katrina bound the wounded paw tenderly. All that afternoon the squirrel seemed to be thinking deeply, and Katrina could not make him talk.

Utter darkness fell early. The dungeon grew very cold, so that both Katrina and the squirrel shivered. She wrapped herself in the scarlet and gold tapestry, took the squirrel in her hands, and crouched near the window.

Soon came a stir in the leaves outside. “Are you there, Princess?” asked the muffled voice. Katrina felt the squirrel begin to tremble violently.

“Yes, Gray Owl,” she answered, waiting for him to say, “Keep a good heart.” But instead, he said: “Prepare to leave the dungeon, Princess. Stand away from the window, for soon a large stone of the wall will fall into the dungeon.”

Katrina moved to the opposite side, having hard work to keep the squirrel in her hands; he acted so frightened that she knew now it had been fear, not anger, which made him run away every time the owl’s name was mentioned.

“Are you safe, Princess?” came the gray owl’s question.

“Yes,” she cried. Then she saw a heavy stone of the wall move inward more and more until it slid to the ground with a dull sound, and left a large open space in the wall.

“Here’s the boy of the Club,” announced Sarah, appearing at the door, followed by Ben.

Ruth Warren went forward to greet the red-cheeked boy, whose hair lay wet upon his forehead.

“‘YES, GRAY OWL,’ SHE ANSWERED.”

“I thought I’d come for a little while,” said Ben, his eyes upon the last cookie in the plate, a long-necked horse. “Skating wasn’t much good, and I got in twice.” His wet shoes proved this.

“Sit here by the hearth and dry your feet, Ben,” said Miss Ruth, turning to brighten the fire.

“Let me do that,” said Ben gallantly, reaching for the tongs.

Sarah took the plate from the table and vanished. Alice began explaining things to Ben:

“Miss Ruth is telling us a story about Prince Gray Owl, and he is just saving Princess Katrina from the dungeon. I can tell you the first of it on the way home, Ben.” Alice had jumped up from her chair and was devotedly watching her brother while he blew to start the fire until his red cheeks stood out like small balloons.

“Please go on with the story, Miss Ruth,” cried Betty, impatient at the delay.

But just then Sarah came in with the large plate piled high again with cookies. Ben put the tongs back in their place and seated himself contentedly near the cookies.

Miss Ruth spent a moment or two in looking over the girls’ sewing. Betty had already made one doll’s dress and begun another. Elsa and Alice were just finishing their first ones. When Miss Ruth seated herself again, Elsa drew her chair nearer, and every now and then, as Miss Ruth went on with the story, Elsa reached out and stroked the soft fur on the golden-brown gown.

“Princess, can you come through this opening in the wall?” asked a voice outside of the window-bars.

Trembling now with excitement, the princess took up the tapestry which had fallen around her and made it into a long roll, slender like herself.

“Try if this will go through, Gray Owl,” she said. The squirrel clung to her shoulder.

Slowly the roll of tapestry disappeared through the opening.

“Do you dare follow, Princess?” came the thrilling question.

“I dare—and I follow,” she answered.

“Save me!” cried the squirrel.

Katrina hid the shivering little creature in the folds of her blue gossamer scarf, and with a last look around the dread dungeon, extended her arms and put her head and shoulders through the opening in the wall. Even before the rain-drops outside fell upon her hands, she felt both hands grasped strongly, and she was drawn gently and steadily forward until she could spring to her feet upright upon the soft ground.

Before her stood—not the gray owl she had expected to see, but a tall young man with a graceful figure, and richly dressed in a princely robe of dark green velvet.

The young man bowed low before Katrina. “Princess,” he said, “I am the oldest son of the king, your neighbour. I was slightly wounded in one of my father’s battles, and I came home the very day that your old nurse escaped to my father’s castle and told of your imprisonment in this dungeon. I took the shape of an owl and flew across the moat, and as it was my right arm which was wounded, I kept the owl’s shape and worked with the strong beak to remove this stone and free you.”

“Sir, never did a knight do more for a maiden,” said the princess, in turn bowing low. She saw that his right arm hung in a sling.

“I will now fly with you to my father’s castle, where my mother, the queen, and your faithful nurse await you,” said the prince.

Seeing the wonder on the sweet face of the princess, the prince said: “Once, when I was a boy, I saved a young gray owl from a fierce eagle; and the gray owl’s father was so grateful that he gave me the power to change into a gray owl, at will.”

Then the prince said something which sounded like—

“Gray owl, gray owl,

I would be

A strong gray owl,

Like to thee.”

And he turned into a great, soft-feathered gray owl. It could not have been just those words,—because Katrina tried to use them so that she might turn into an owl herself, long afterward, just for fun.

The prince, now the gray owl, spread out one of his soft wings and took the princess under it; then he gathered the roll of tapestry under the other wing, and flew away, over the moat, toward his father’s castle.

“What about the gray squirrel?” asked Ben, excitedly flourishing a half-eaten camel.

On the flight to the home of the prince—said Miss Ruth—Katrina told the prince about the gray squirrel, whose little heart she could feel all the time beating against hers. “I have him with me, under my scarf,” she said. “He is afraid of you, I think,” she added, so low that the squirrel could not hear.

“The gray owls will do anything for me,” said the prince in a loud voice. “I will tell the greatest gray owl, the king of the forest, that from this time forth the owls and the squirrels must live peaceably together.”

Hearing this, the squirrel took courage and put his head out from the folds of Katrina’s blue scarf. “Thank you, Gray Owl,” he said gratefully. Then he slipped away, for they were near the home of the elf, and he was anxious to have his front teeth and his broken paw mended.

It happened that the neighbouring king, who had been for many years away at war, grew alarmed when his son, Prince Edward, was wounded; and so the king came hurrying home the very night of the day that Princess Katrina was rescued from the dungeon. When this good king heard the story of her imprisonment, he decided to set forth the next morning to punish her wicked uncle, Wulfred, whom he had never liked, but with whom he had lived in peace, up to this time.

That day, at noon, the false king made his way to the East Tower and lifted up the trap-door of the dungeon. “Katrina! are you ready to marry King Rupert?” he shouted down into the darkness.

No voice answered. The uncle called again in a louder voice. Still no answer came. He peered down into the blackness by the light of a long torch he had brought, but he could see nothing except the bed of leaves, the rude bench and the chair.

“She lies dead under the leaves,” the uncle whispered to himself with chattering teeth. A bat flew against his face. Shaking with fear, he let the trap-door fall and hurried away, back through the winding, cobwebby passages, to the state rooms of the palace.

But there more fears awaited him. His three wicked counsellors rushed up and drew him to the front window, crying: “See!” “A foe is marching upon us!” “A great and mighty army!”

The false king saw in the distance an army of hundreds of men, all in glistening armour, with waving plumes and gleaming shields, line after line stretching far into the distance. At the head of the army, upon a magnificent black war-horse, rode the neighbouring king, clad in a suit of mail, with a glittering helmet on his head, surmounted by a flowing white plume. Behind the king, each upon a beautiful white horse, rode Prince Edward and Princess Katrina; and upon the shoulder of the princess perched a large gray squirrel.

“Then what happened?” questioned Betty, breathlessly.

Miss Ruth, glancing at the clock, saw that the hands pointed closely to five, so she told the rest of the story very fast:

The wicked uncle was a coward before danger. When he found that the princess was with this great army, he made no resistance, but at once ordered the white flag of surrender to be flung out from the tower, for he knew that the powerful neighbouring king would not fail to avenge Katrina’s wrongs.

The conquering king made the wicked uncle a prisoner, and had him put into the same dungeon where Katrina had been imprisoned. Prince Edward and Princess Katrina were married soon after, and ruled happily for many, many years. Behind their thrones hung the splendid scarlet-and-gold tapestry upon which the princess had worked during those dreary days in the dungeon. When the wicked uncle was an old man, grown thin and white-haired, Katrina had him set free from prison, and he spent his last days at the court, playing with a feeble, old gray squirrel.

“Is that all?” sighed Betty, when Miss Ruth stopped talking.

“Thank you ever so much,” said Elsa, as she sat looking into the fire: “I like Prince Gray Owl,” she added soberly.

“I think Katrina was the best, though, because she had the poor old uncle pardoned,” said tender-hearted Alice.

“What about the owls and the squirrels?” asked Ben, who was still eating ginger cookies.

“O, the owls and the squirrels lived happily together ever after in the woods around, even ‘as far as the lands of the wicked King Rupert, two days’ journey beyond the sunset,’” said Miss Ruth.

“I wish there was some more about them!” exclaimed Betty.

“There is more about the owls and the squirrels all the time, in the woods,” said Miss Ruth. “How would you like some Friday afternoon, instead of having our meeting in the house, to walk out to the Convalescent Home and then come back through the woods?”

Each and every member of the Club agreed that this would be a splendid way to have a club meeting. “We could take home the sewing that we would do at the meeting,” suggested Betty, “and bring it all finished to the next meeting, so as not to lose time dressing the dolls.”

“You have done well this afternoon, girls,” said Miss Ruth, beginning to gather up the dolls and their dresses; “and Betty’s idea is a good one. Each of you ask at home if she may go on the walk, and perhaps we can have it next Friday.”

“Then we can all see the Convalescings,” said Ben eagerly. “They are nice little children, and I like to see them getting well.”

“Five o’clock and five minutes after!” cried Elsa, springing up. “I must go, or grandmother will not like it.”

“Do you have to mind—even five minutes?” asked Betty, in surprise.

“Yes,” answered Elsa, hurriedly putting on her long black cloak. “Uncle Ned tells me to do just what grandmother says.”

“Who is your Uncle Ned?” inquired Betty, who was taking a few last stitches in the doll’s dress.

“Uncle Ned? He is the nicest and the dearest and the best man in all the world,” said Elsa, her violet-gray eyes growing eloquent with feeling. “He is nicer even than Prince Gray Owl, and I miss him all the time. Good-bye.” And Elsa ran away with her wide black felt hat hanging from her arm, and with something very much like tears shining in her eyes.

Betty had sewed rapidly, and now she held up a second doll’s dress, finished.

“Good, Betty!” said Miss Ruth. “Let me count how many we have done,—your two, Elsa and Alice each one, and two of mine, six in all, out of the twenty-four; it will take us just three meetings more to finish the eighteen dresses that are left.”

“Then we can do some paper dolls, and rag dolls,” said Alice, clapping her hands softly.

“Maybe I could help about the paper dolls;” Ben made the suggestion with a rather careless air. “I could paint dresses, because I know what looks pretty. When I grow up to be a man I am going to earn a lot of money and buy pretty dresses for Alice, and I’m going to get her a black lace one and a yellowy brown one trimmed with fur,” he said, slowly.

Miss Ruth nodded encouragingly as she met Ben’s earnest blue eyes.

“I will give you some of the pretty dresses, Betty,” said Alice unselfishly, feeling perfectly sure that Ben would do whatever he promised.

Betty almost said, “I have prettier dresses now than you have,” but she stopped just in time and said instead: “I will give you a blue velvet dress, like Princess Katrina’s.”

To-day, Alice’s blue sailor-suit looked more worn and even shorter than before, and Ben’s sturdy little figure seemed almost bursting out through his tight jacket. But both Alice and Ben were too happy-natured to care much about clothes. He helped her on with her shabby blue coat most affectionately. The twins were very fond of one another, although Ben, being a boy, did not think so much about this as Alice did, for she openly and eagerly showed her love for him.

It was after quarter past five o’clock when Elsa Danforth, waiting in the bay-window of the dining-room for her bread-and-milk supper, saw Betty and Alice and Ben come out of the Warren house. “They have had all this much longer good time!” Elsa said to herself. Life seemed especially lonely to her just then. Her grandmother had reproved her for being late, as well as for running home without her hat on.

Elsa was just a simple and loving little girl, who tried very hard not to be an unhappy one, although she knew she was living without many things which other little girls had in their homes and with their mothers. She was lonelier than ever that night, when bedtime came: and this is how it happened.

Mrs. Danforth had hired a pew at the largest church in Berkeley, and had given money generously whenever asked to help any good cause. It had come time for the ladies of the church to make their yearly gift of clothing and toys to the Convalescent Home. And Mrs. Everett, the head of the committee, called upon Mrs. Danforth for some money, that afternoon.

“It seems too bad to spend money for playthings when so much is needed for clothing,” said Mrs. Everett, as she folded the crisp ten-dollar bill which Mrs. Danforth handed her. “Has your grandchild any old toys which might do for the children?”

“I am sure she has,” replied Mrs. Danforth, remembering a large boxful of half-worn toys in the garret,—toys which Elsa had said she was tired of.

“I could take them in my carriage now,” said Mrs. Everett. She was a large-hearted woman, much interested in the Convalescent Home and eager to help it.

Mrs. Danforth rang for her maid. “Cummings,” she said to the very prim and proper looking woman in starched white cap and black dress who appeared instantly, “bring down that boxful of Miss Elsa’s old toys from the garret. I am going to give them to a children’s home.”

As Cummings went noiselessly out of the room, Mrs. Danforth asked of her caller: “Do you happen to know a poor family by the name of Colt or Holt who live just outside the town?” The proud-faced woman bent forward to disentangle the gold chain of her eye-glasses from the jet ornaments of her waist.

“Yes, I know the Holts,” said Mrs. Everett. “They are poor but very self-respecting people.”

“They have a market-garden, I believe?” said Mrs. Danforth, still struggling with the chain.

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Everett, “and they raise excellent lettuce and radishes; I can safely recommend their garden products to you. May I help you with that chain, Mrs. Danforth?”

“Thank you, I have it free now,” said Mrs. Danforth, leaning back and changing the subject.

When Cummings came noiselessly in again, with a large pasteboard box, almost full of tin soldiers, picture-books and such playthings, she suggested very respectfully. “Miss Elsa has the lower drawer of her bureau full of toys, ma’am.”

“Are you sure Miss Elsa does not play with them, Cummings?”

The gray-haired woman shook her head primly: “Oh, no, ma’am; she never touches them,”—which was the truth, so far as Cummings knew.

“Very well; bring them also,” said Mrs. Danforth.

As a result, some battered dolls’ furniture, two or three boxes of games, and one small china doll were added to the collection in the pasteboard box. Cummings took the now-filled box out to Mrs. Everett’s carriage, and the kind-hearted woman drove away, happy in having secured both money and playthings for the Convalescent Home.

When Elsa was ready for bed that night, she opened the lower drawer of the white bureau to take out Bettina. Her hand fell upon heaped-up ruffled and embroidered garments.

She turned on the electric light. There, in place of the odd assortment of playthings under which she had kept Bettina hidden, was a pile of white underclothing.

Something seemed almost to stop Elsa’s heart from beating as she opened one bureau drawer after another, and even hunted under the bureau, without finding her beloved doll. Suddenly she remembered hearing her grandmother say, that evening, that she had given away some old toys to the Convalescent Home children, and her own answer: “I am glad you did, grandmother.” Bettina must have been among them.

Sobbing bitterly, yet without making any sound, Elsa turned off the light and crept into bed. She felt so lonely and wretched that she could not go to sleep. After awhile, she climbed out of bed and stood in front of the row of dolls on the white couch between the windows. She chose the smallest of these dolls, the one which was most like Bettina, held her for a moment, then kissed her, put her down and crept back to bed. Much as she missed Bettina, she could not bear to take another doll in her place. Again the child fell to sobbing in an agony of loneliness.

She heard the great clock in the hall chime nine; a moment after, Cummings closed the door of her own room. When the chimes rang out the half-hour, Mrs. Danforth’s steps came up the polished front stairs, passed Elsa’s door, and Elsa heard her grandmother’s door close. Soon the house was quiet, save for the sound of heavy breathing from Cummings’s room. Cummings could be noiseless by day but not by night.

Elsa felt that she could not stay in bed another moment. She sprang out and went again to the row of dolls. Looking out of the window, she saw a shadow pass across the thin lace curtains of the Warrens’ library windows,—a shadow which she knew must be Miss Ruth’s.

A desperate hope of comfort flashed into Elsa’s mind. Without a moment’s delay, she slipped her little bare feet into her white, fur-lined bedroom shoes, put on the thick, long, white bathrobe which hung over a chair, and softly opened her door. Then with a quick-beating heart but without any thought of fear, she crept down the stairs, took a great fur cape of her grandmother’s from the hall, undid the front door latch, left the door ajar, and ran down the steps, in the faint moonlight, and across the dry grass of the lawn to the Warrens’ house.

Ruth Warren had just put out the lights in the library and was fastening back the curtains when she saw the strange little figure speeding toward her house. “Fairy or elf or child,—who is it, I wonder?” she said to herself. There was something so distressful-looking in the little hurrying figure that she did not wait for the bell to ring.

“Why, Elsa dear, what is the trouble?” she asked, drawing the child into the hall.

Elsa clung to Miss Ruth, sobbing in heart-broken fashion.

“Has anything happened to your grandmother?”

“No, O, no,—not that—I’ve lost—” but sobs drowned the words.

“Have your cry out, dear, and then tell me about it.” Miss Ruth led Elsa into the library, drew a chair in front of the fireplace where the coals were yet glowing brightly, unfastened the heavy fur cape and took the slender little white-gowned figure into her arms.

The comfort of being told to cry all she wanted to, and of having kind arms around her soon quieted Elsa’s sobs.

With only a little break in her voice, now and then, she told the story of her loss, feeling, with a child’s sure intuition, that Miss Ruth understood. “It is—so hard,” she said with a final sigh, hiding her face against the friendly shoulder; “I have had Bettina ever since nurse went away.”

“I know it is hard, dear,” Miss Ruth softly stroked the yellow hair. “What shall we do?”

That “we” was so comforting.

“I—I s’pose I must get along without her,” said Elsa, sitting upright. The quivering lips and tear-dimmed violet-gray eyes told the grief in her heart, but her bravery was conquering now.

“How old are you, Elsa?” asked Miss Ruth.

“Almost twelve.”

Miss Ruth wisely waited.

There was a tender apology in Elsa’s voice when she spoke again: “Grandmother didn’t know about Bettina. She doesn’t know how lonesome I am.”

Then Elsa turned and looked eagerly into Miss Ruth’s face: “Is your room over the library?”

“Yes, right over this room.”

Elsa slipped off from Miss Ruth’s lap to the arm of the chair: “I—I think I could go back now and go to sleep—without Bettina—if you would just leave one curtain up a little wee bit so as I could know you—you thought about me—once in awhile,” she said slowly. “I—I shouldn’t feel so lonely then,—’cause from where my bed is I can look right out to the window where there is a tall green vase—I thought maybe it was your room.”

“I will leave that curtain up a little way every night, Elsa, and I will put a rose in that vase to-night, especially for you, so that you can see the shadow on the curtain,” said Miss Ruth, rising.

“O, will you?” The silvery voice was eloquent with gratitude. As Elsa raised her head she suddenly felt very tired and sleepy. Indeed, the child was almost worn out.

“Now, Elsa, I am going to bring you a glass of milk and then go home with you,” said Miss Ruth. “Just think how alarmed your grandmother would be if she should miss you.”

“O, I know she hasn’t missed me,” exclaimed Elsa. “She never thinks about me, I am sure, after I go to bed.” And Miss Ruth left the child sitting up with shining eyes and a bright red spot on each cheek.

Elsa was drinking the milk just as the clock struck ten. Quite as if her grandmother had told her to come home at exactly ten o’clock, she slipped down from the chair, pulled the great fur cape over her shoulders, and waited in the hall, a brave little figure with a flushed face, while Miss Ruth put on her red golf cape.

Miss Ruth fastened the long fur cape securely around Elsa,—for the night air was chilling cold,—opened the front door, and, before the child realized it, took her up, a soft, furry bundle and a heavy one,—and ran with her across the strip of lawn. The door of the Danforth house was ajar.

“Hush, be very quiet, dear, or we shall wake your grandmother,” she said, dropping the furry bundle on the top step of the Danforth veranda and kissing the warm, sleepy face. “Lock the door safely, and go straight to bed and to sleep.”

But Elsa stopped long enough to whisper into Miss Ruth’s ear: “Thank you ever and ever so much.”

Almost as soon as Elsa had put down the latch, left the fur cape in the hall and crept up-stairs to bed, she saw a light in Miss Ruth’s room and one window shade raised just a little. Even while her eyes were fixed upon the shadow of a rose against the curtain, she fell fast asleep and dreamed that her Uncle Ned came in the shape of a great gray owl, and rescued her out of a white-walled dungeon.

CHAPTER III
WHAT THE WOODS GAVE

The world is so full of a number of things,

I am sure we should all be as happy as kings.

—Robert Louis Stevenson.

“I WISH we could walk out to the Convalescent Home this afternoon,” were Betty’s first words when the three girls reached Miss Ruth’s house the next Friday, all very much out of breath from their haste. “I am tired, school has been so dull and stupid,” said Betty, “and my head aches. Please can we go?” Betty, from at first not wanting to go to the Convalescent Home, now wanted very much to go, for, since then, Alice had been telling her more about it.

“Would you like to take the walk this afternoon, Elsa?” Miss Ruth inquired. “Is your grandmother willing for you to go?”

“Yes, Miss Ruth,” replied Elsa; “I asked grandmother about it this noon, and she said if you thought it was all right, I might go any time.”

Miss Ruth turned next to Alice: “Does it suit you, Alice?”

Alice also was eager for the visit, so Miss Ruth decided that there could be no better time. The three girls were tired and fagged from their school, and fresh air would do them more good than staying indoors. The afternoon was sunshiny, the ground bare of snow, and outdoors looked very tempting. And it was, moreover, the day after Thanksgiving, when children do not always feel at their best.

“We will take a lunch with us,—unless you would rather have it now,” suggested Miss Ruth. As no one seemed to be hungry now, the lunch plan met with general favour.

“Excuse me then,” said Miss Ruth, “and I will have Sarah put something in a box for us.”

“And I will run home and get my thick coat,” said Betty, who had worn only a light jacket. “It may be cold coming back, and such a tender little plant as I am mustn’t take cold.” In fact, however, Betty wanted to tell her mother where she was going, as she did not have permission for this particular day, as Elsa had.

Sarah Judd sat in the tidy kitchen knitting a white stocking, her needles keeping time with her bobbing curls, her black cat on the table by her elbow. At Ruth Warren’s words: “I want a lunch for my little people, Sarah,” the woman snapped out: “I declare for it, I’m glad you are goin’ to do it yourself. I’m tired of waitin’ on a pack of children that make so many crumbs—”

“Now, Sarah, you know you like having the children come here,” interrupted Miss Ruth. “We are going for a walk to-day, as it happens. Is there bread enough for sandwiches?”

“Yes;” Sarah made her needles go very fast.

“And cookies enough for four children?”

“Yes.” Then Sarah, who could not make her needles go any faster, jumped up with stiff quickness, exclaiming: “Land sakes! let me do it. I know what children like; you go ’way an’ I’ll surprise you and them, too,”—which was exactly what the mistress of the house had been waiting for Sarah to say.

She ran up-stairs to tell her Aunt Virginia good-bye. When she came into the library again, she found that Betty had returned and that the three girls were standing around the centre-table where the dolls were, trying to decide which they should dress next.

“Girls, Aunt Virginia wants to see you, because she has heard so much about the Club,” said Miss Ruth.

“You haven’t told her the name, have you?” Betty asked anxiously, as they followed Miss Ruth up-stairs.

“O, no! I just call it ‘the Club’ when I speak of it.”

“That’s the way I do,” Betty said, encouragingly, running on ahead.

Miss Virginia Warren was accustomed to take extremely good care of herself. To-day she was sitting in a large easy chair with soft cushions all around her and a dark blue afghan over her knees. She was about sixty years old, a large, rather heavy-looking woman, very pale because she did not like fresh air in her room and never went out-of-doors in cold weather; and indeed, she took as little exercise as possible all times of the year, because she lived in constant fear of bringing on heart trouble. Her face, though white, was very fair, and her brown eyes—in colour and in a quick way she had of raising them—were like Ruth Warren’s, but there the likeness ended, for the aunt’s eyes had a wilful expression; her mouth also had a selfish droop at the corners.

Miss Virginia was dressed in a light blue wrapper, much trimmed with white lace. She shook hands with each of the three girls,—she had large, handsome hands, but without much life in them,—then she looked the girls over as if they were a row of dolls.

“They seem like bright little children,” she said slowly, turning to Ruth Warren, her voice sounding as if she lifted a weight with her chest at each breath; “but they look so well and strong and so full of life,”—here Betty stopped twisting herself,—“so full of life, Ruth,” went on the slow voice, “that I should think they would tire you all out.”

Miss Virginia, who had leaned forward slightly while she spoke, sank back among her pillows. “They may go now,” she said, with a wave of her large, white hand in the direction of the embarrassed children; “I am tired already,” she repeated, “and you know almost anything brings on heart trouble.”

Ruth Warren had heard this remark hundreds of times in the three years since she had offered a home to this aunt who was alone in the world; but she was unfailingly kind to the fanciful woman. “Yes, Aunt Virginia, you must be careful,” she said, motioning for the children to go down-stairs.

“Remember, Aunt Virginia, Sarah will come to you instantly any moment you ring for her,” said Ruth Warren, stopping to arrange her aunt’s pillows more comfortably, and kissing her on the forehead. But the slow yet vigorous voice followed her out of the door: “I am growing so feeble, Ruth, that I soon must have a regular nurse to stay with me, especially when you are out.”

The three girls were unusually quiet when Ruth Warren joined them, for her aunt had made them feel as if they were very troublesome.

“What shall we do about the dolls’ dresses, our work to-day?” the Club president asked cheerfully.

“We might each make two at home,” Betty found voice to say, for the Club: “Alice might take hers now, and Elsa and I can call for ours.”

So Alice chose two pink-and-white gingham dresses, rolled them into a little bundle and put them into the pocket of her blue coat, while Elsa and Betty looked on, embarrassed and quiet, even now.

But when Miss Ruth had put on the brown fur-trimmed coat and hat which matched her brown dress, and the three girls were once out in the open air, the shadow cast upon their spirits by Miss Virginia vanished entirely. Each one begged to carry the straw hand-bag containing the lunch, and they finally agreed to carry it by turns, beginning with Elsa, the oldest.

“You have to pass my house to go to the Convalescent Home, and there are dogs out that way,” suggested Alice, running on ahead and looking back at the others.

“I will take a stick,” said Elsa.

“I will take my feet,” exclaimed Betty.

“We can stop at my house and ask Ben to go with us,” Alice said. “He had to hurry home from school to do errands for mamma, but I think he will have them finished now. He knows all the dogs, and they all know him.”

A few moments’ walk took the Club into Berkeley Avenue, a long, wooded road curving ahead. Soon the surroundings grew more and more country-like. The road ran past wide farm-fields and comfortable homes with lazy cows standing in the barn-yards and busy hens scratching in the deserted gardens. Along the roadside, tall oak and chestnut trees met in noble arches; all around was the faint rustle of dried leaves and the soft swaying of bending branches.

“How far is it to where we are going?” asked Betty, impatiently, turning to Alice.

“It’s a half-mile from my house,” answered Alice, “and we are almost to my house. It’s that little one with a lot of windows.”

“We have come more than a half-mile,” said Miss Ruth, “so it must be Betty’s turn to carry the straw bag.”

Betty took the bag, and darted along the road, here and there, to the great risk of the lunch.

They were soon in front of the small wooden house, well back from the road, and having a great many windows full of flowers. Ben, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, was splitting kindling-wood at the side of the house. He came running down to meet them.

“Going to the Convalescing Home? Yes, I can go, too,” he said, pulling down his shirt-sleeves. “I’ve done the errands, and was splitting kindlings just for fun.”

“Won’t you please come into my house, Miss Ruth?” asked Alice, shyly. “Mamma said she wanted the Club to meet here sometime. She would like to see you now, I know.”

“We will come, sometime, Alice; thank you,” replied Miss Ruth, “but not to-day. We have to be back home before dark.”

So Alice ran in to speak to her mother and to leave the dolls’ dresses, just as Ben came hurrying out, buttoning his tight little blue jacket.

“I might hitch up Jerry to the delivery wagon and take you that way,” suggested Ben.

“No, walking is more fun,” said Betty, who always knew exactly what she wanted to do. A moment later Alice ran toward them, waving good-bye to the young-looking woman who stood in the doorway. Betty flourished the lunch-bag wildly in the air, while Miss Ruth and Elsa waved friendly greetings and Ben shouted farewells.

“What a splendid place to live in, Alice, with the woods so near,” said Elsa. “I love to walk in the woods and go hunting into bushes, and discover things.” Elsa looked with eager eyes at the clumps of scrub-oak and low bushes ahead, beyond the stone wall.

“There are snakes there sometimes, in warm weather,” said timid Alice.

“I’m not afraid of snakes,” Elsa said.

“I love ’em,—the cunning little ones,” cried Betty; which was true, for Betty loved almost everything that was alive.

“I will tell you a very short story about a friend of mine,” said Miss Ruth. The children fell into line at once, Betty and Elsa on the right, Ben and Alice on the left.

“I was in a small country town one summer with this friend,” Miss Ruth began, “and some one asked her to take a Sunday-school class of boys who were full of mischief and fun. For awhile, that first Sunday, everything went well; then, just as my friend was explaining the lesson to the boys at one side, she felt something drop into her lap, and turning, she saw a little green snake. Those boys looked at her, expecting at least that she would scream. The snake wriggled and tried to escape, but the boy who had brought him was too quick, and grasped the snake; and he was so surprised when the teacher said: ‘That isn’t the way to hold him. Don’t you see you are making him uncomfortable?’ So she took hold of him.”

“The boy or the snake?” asked Ben, quick as a flash.

“The snake,” said Miss Ruth, answering the laugh in Ben’s eyes. “And she held him—the snake, I mean—for ten or fifteen minutes, talking about him until those boys thought she was the nicest teacher they had ever had.”

“Could you have done that, Miss Ruth?” asked Betty.

But just then a large black and white hound bounded from the porch of a house they were passing and ran with great leaps toward them, baying in a deep voice.

“Tinker! Tinker!” called Ben, darting forward. Alice drew around to the other side of Miss Ruth, while Elsa and even Betty stepped a little behind.

“Tinker!” exclaimed Ben again, in a steady tone. “Come here! Don’t you bark at my Black Lace Lady!”

The great hound, on hearing Ben’s voice, had stopped short. Now, with eyes cast down, he walked meekly to Ben, who put out his hand and stroked the long, soft ears, saying: “Bad old Tinker, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

As Alice had said, Ben was friends with all the dogs on the road. The hound, after walking a few steps with Ben’s hand on his head, turned and went toward his home.

“I wasn’t a bit afraid,” said Betty, coming forward again.

Ben gave a low whistle to express his thoughts. The others were politely silent.

“What was it you called Miss Ruth, Ben?” Betty asked quickly.

“Black Lace Lady,” Ben answered, “because she had on a black lace dress the first time I ever saw her, and it was pretty.”

“Ben always names people,” said Alice. “He calls me Peggy most of the time.”

“What is your name for me, Ben?” asked Betty, dancing on ahead.

“You?” Ben looked at her brown curls and bright eyes for a half moment and then said: “I am going to call you the Glad Girl.”

“That’s nice,” Betty said, with an extra swing of the lunch-bag. “Mother calls me Sunshine sometimes—and sometimes the Tornado. What’s your name for Elsa?”

Ben thought a moment: “I haven’t any name for Elsa yet: I am saving that up.” Then he gazed at Miss Ruth anxiously: “Isn’t it Alice’s turn to carry that straw bag?” Alice had found time to explain to him about the lunch. “We can take shorter turns now, ’cause I can carry it, too.”

So the bag was given into Alice’s keeping.

“Tell us about the place where we are going, Miss Ruth, please?” asked Elsa, who was enjoying the woods walk so much that she had kept quiet most of the way.

“To begin with,” replied Miss Ruth, “there is a large hospital in the city, especially for children; but large as it is, there are always more sick children to be taken into it than there is room for. When the children in the hospital are getting well, they are brought out here to the Convalescent Home where they can be cared for before going to their own homes,—which are sometimes very poor homes. And the life out here, with the sunshine and the fresh air and good care, makes the children ever and ever so much stronger. There are about seventy or eighty children here all the time.”

“Poor little children,” said Elsa. Betty was walking along quietly now, and Ben had taken Alice’s blue-mittened hand in his.

“Yes, poor little children,” Miss Ruth repeated. “The happy part of it all is, though, that the children are growing stronger. But just think how they have to go without the playing and running about you all can have. Once a little girl, seven years old, whom I saw out here, and who couldn’t walk, said: ‘I used to play when I was young.’”

“There’s the house now,” exclaimed Alice, as they came within sight of a large red-brick building with many red chimneys, situated quite far back from the highway.

Just where the road turned toward the comfortable-looking red house stood a tall, wooden sign with the words:

CONVALESCENT HOME
OF THE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
VISITORS ALWAYS WELCOME

“Doesn’t that sound pleasant?” said Betty, reading it aloud. “It makes you feel as though they really want you to come.”

Miss Ruth had been here many times before, so she sent a message to the head-nurse by the maid who opened the front door: “Tell Miss Hartwell that we would like to see her when she is at liberty, and that I have taken my young friends out to the playroom. How many children have you here this week?”

“About seventy-five, Miss Warren,” replied the maid, conducting the little party through the large, airy hall with its light yellow-green walls and dark wood finish, and along a wide passageway to the playroom.

The three girls went on in silence, except that Elsa said to Miss Ruth: “What a lovely, clean place it is!”

Soon they found themselves in a large room—which seemed almost like outdoors, it was so light and pleasant—and in the midst of a great many children, most of whom were upon one crutch or two crutches, or had bandages upon their feet, arms, or even their whole bodies.

“There are over forty children here in the playroom,” said the white-capped nurse who had stepped forward to answer Miss Ruth’s greeting. “The stronger children have been out-of-doors in the fresh air;—but see, they are coming in now,” she added. “Miss Hartwell has them come in half an hour before their supper time.”

Sliding glass doors led from the playroom upon a wide, unroofed piazza. And now, through the open doorway, a tall, slender woman led the long line of children, who limped or pushed themselves along on go-carts; only a few, even, of these stronger children could walk in the straight, free fashion in which ordinary boys and girls walk, when they have full use of their limbs.

“How happy they all look,” said Elsa; and indeed, the children’s faces, though in many cases thin and pathetic-looking, were sweet, patient and sunshiny.

“They always look just the same, every time I come here,” Alice said; then she ran off to speak with a little girl whom she remembered. Ben was already in a corner, surrounded by a group of boys.

While Miss Ruth went on talking with the head-nurse, Betty and Elsa forgot their shyness,—which was easy, because the children came crowding around them, with lively interest. To Betty, who was used to her own baby brother, the most natural thing to do seemed to be to sit down on the floor and play with the smallest ones. Elsa, heeding the “Go walk! Go walk!” of two little girls, wandered away with one holding fast to each hand. When the little girls grew tired, as they did quickly, Elsa came back to Miss Ruth’s side, with shining, eloquent gray eyes: “They are so friendly, the dear little things,” she said to Miss Ruth, then walked slowly away, with two other girls, to a group of children who were strapped down to go-carts, and flat upon their backs.

A mite of five years, with round blue eyes and a pale, patient face, held out both hands toward Elsa’s sunshiny yellow hair, saying “Pitty, O, pitty!” Just beyond, a little boy was turning his head toward the window. “What are you looking at?” Elsa asked, as she drew near.

“At the sky; it’s nice up there,” the boy answered contentedly.

By his side, on the next go-cart, a small girl was singing to herself a nursery-verse Elsa knew; so she stopped and joined in the singing:

“Come, little leaves,” said the wind one day,

“Come over the meadow with me and play;

Put on your dresses of red and gold,

For winter is come and the days grow cold.”

Elsa’s baby companions, tired of walking, dropped down in little patient heaps upon the floor, saying in soft voices: “Sing more! More song!”

“Oh!”

Miss Ruth turned at Elsa’s exclamation and saw her kneeling by the side of a child of about seven years, who was hugging an old, battered china doll. The child was strapped to a frame which held her body straight, because her back was not like other children’s. “Let me hold your dolly a moment,” Elsa was saying, although Ruth Warren could not hear the words.

“No! No! Dirl take dolly ’way!” cried the little girl, who had a ruddy face and dark, sparkling eyes.

Miss Ruth, still talking with the head-nurse, watched Elsa, unheeded by her.

“Where did you get the dolly?” Elsa asked, longing to take her old doll into her arms, for she had instantly known her own Bettina.

“Lady dave her to me,” said the child.

“What is the dolly’s name?” asked Elsa.

“Dolly.” The child looked up solemnly.

“Don’t you want to have a name for her?” Elsa asked, after a half moment of waiting.

“Vhat?” asked the child, clasping her tiny hands the tighter around the doll.

“Name her Bettina,” said Elsa, softly.

“’Tina,” repeated the little girl. “Dat’s dood name. Dat’s nursey’s name.”

“Where is nursey?” Elsa sprang up from her knees and looked around the room at the nurses. All the faces were strange to her. “Where is she?” Elsa asked again, almost in tears.

“Don ’way,” said the wee little girl. And, leaving her staring with two very bright eyes at the doll, Elsa went back to Miss Ruth’s side and took hold of her hand tightly.

“You ought to be here some day when new children come,” said the head-nurse kindly, noticing Elsa’s sober face, “and see how those who have been here longest crowd around and tell the new children about the nice things they do here. It makes the new children feel happy and at home, immediately, so that they are hardly ever homesick. Sometimes after the children are well, they don’t want to go home. One little girl used to run and hide every time we spoke of her going home.”

“I don’t wonder,” Elsa said quickly. “It’s so pleasant here for them.”

“Would you like to see where almost all the children sleep?” asked the head-nurse, now that Elsa’s face had brightened.

“Yes, indeed,” Elsa said. Then Miss Ruth called the other members of the Club, and they followed Miss Hartwell into one after another of the three rooms, or “shacks,” which reached out, like arms, from the playroom; and Miss Hartwell showed them how the windows and even the doors could be moved so as to let plenty of fresh air into the shacks; she said that the children never complained of feeling cold, for they were bundled up in flannel clothing and hoods at night. Some of the children limped along, following the visitors from one shack into the next, and listening, nodded their heads with great interest while Miss Hartwell made the explanation.

“You would enjoy coming here sometime on a kindergarten afternoon,” continued the head-nurse. “We have kindergarten teaching three times a week—Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday afternoon—and no baby is too small and no child too helpless, to take some part, real or make-believe, in the pretty plays.”

Immediately, one little boy, who had heard the word “kindergarten” held up a piece of cardboard which had outlined upon it a yellow carrot with a bright green top. And they all praised it.

“Now I will show you the dining-room,” said Miss Hartwell, leading the way back through the long passage and the pleasant hall. And, then, if Elsa had dared, she would have questioned about the nurse named Bettina; but Elsa was a shy little girl, and before she found courage for the question, they were in the large, many-windowed dining-room with its tall, handsome plants and wide fireplace, and Miss Hartwell was showing them the pretty dishes with red, green, and blue figures, for the children’s use. The room was filled with low tables surrounded by low chairs, and on the tables were plates piled with buttered bread and crackers, while in front of each place was a large cupful of milk and a dish of apple-sauce.

“The children have supper very early on winter afternoons,” Miss Hartwell said. She had hardly spoken these words when the long procession of children began coming into the dining-room,—the stronger ones first, sometimes leading or helping the weaker ones, then those who could not walk, pushing themselves along on their go-carts. Last of all came the nurses with the youngest and weakest children.

The visitors drew somewhat to one side and watched the children as they took their places or were drawn up to the tables.

At a signal from the head-nurse after each little white bib was tied into place, the children began singing in thin, sweet voices:

“Thank Him, thank Him,

All ye little children;

Thank Him, thank Him,

God is love.”

Elsa’s and Betty’s eyes filled with tears; the children’s grace touched Alice’s and Ben’s hearts into tenderness, too, although the twins had heard it before; then they all dried their eyes, smiling through joyful tears, as the children began to eat their supper.

“Sometimes we have gingerbread for supper,” said a sweet-faced child who was lying on a go-cart near the visitors, and whom one of the nurses was feeding.

“Tum aden,” cried the bright-eyed little girl who, as the visitors turned to go, was hugging an old china doll, and patiently waiting her turn to be fed.

“You cunning baby!” said Elsa, stooping to kiss the battered doll, once her own.

So half-laughing, half-crying, the children passed out, their hearts overflowing with a kind of painful pleasure.

They kept unusually quiet for the first few moments as they walked away. Elsa was the first one to speak. “I want to come again,” she said in a wistful voice. It had been hard for her to leave her precious old doll behind; and besides, the children interested her greatly.

“So do I,” Betty joined in quickly. “It makes me feel queer, but I like it.”

“I love to come,” said Alice. “Sometimes we take things out to the children; and you’d be s’prised the way they give up to each other. Mamma says they are the most unselfishest children she ever saw.”

Ben was trotting along ahead, jumping every now and then into the air. Suddenly he stopped and said in a serious voice: “I am glad my two legs are whole! My,—but it’s hard for those boys, though.”

“It’s just as hard for the girls,” exclaimed Betty.

“No,—because boys need to race around more than girls; it keeps them from exploding,” declared Ben, taking an extra high jump.

“I know a short way through the woods,” he added, stopping where a foot-path led from the left-hand side of the road. “It comes out just beyond our house; it’s pretty, too, and I can take you to a fine place to eat the lunch.” Ben was growing hungry.

Miss Ruth had kept the lunch-bag, insisting that it was her turn to carry it now. They all agreed to follow Ben’s suggestion; and indeed it was delightful to be walking along under broad-spreading trees through whose branches the late afternoon sunlight struck golden lances. There was an almost perfect stillness in the woods, except for the occasional calling of crows overhead among the tree-tops or the Jay! Jay! of that handsome robber, the blue-jay.

“How does the Convalescent Home have money enough to take care of all those children?” asked Elsa, sliding along, on the smooth carpet of pine-needles, toward Miss Ruth.

“The managers, the ladies who have charge of the Home, give money and their friends give money, to provide the clothing—shoes and stockings and nightgowns and little flannel dresses and everything,—besides paying the nurses’ wages and for the medicines. It takes a great deal of money; and ever so many more children could be brought here and cured if there were more money to provide care and clothing for them.”

“Perhaps my grandmother will give something,” Elsa said hesitatingly. “O, I know,” she added, her face brightening, “Uncle Ned will help. I will ask him.”

“I am glad we are going to give the children some dolls; they didn’t have many,” said Betty, rustling on ahead through the piled-up dry leaves.

“We might earn some money—our Club, I mean,” suggested Alice.

“We will give them all the dolls and playthings we can for Christmas,” said Elsa, putting her arm around Alice; “then, when we start a new club, we can maybe have it an Easter Club, and see how much money we can earn for those poor little children.”

“Alice and I had our names printed in the Convalescing Home report last year,” Ben called back over his shoulder; he was leading the way. “It said this: ‘From Ben and Alice, a music-box;’ we gave them one we had,” he explained.

“Will the dolls we give and the name of our Club be printed in the report, Miss Ruth?” asked Betty excitedly.

“Yes, that is the custom,” answered Miss Ruth.

“But then everybody would know the name,” objected Betty, walking slowly on.

“Never mind,” Alice said, putting her arm into Betty’s. “We can name the Club over again after Christmas.”

“And we wouldn’t want to call an Easter Club by the same name as a Christmas Club,” said Elsa.

“What’s the name of the Club, anyway?” Ben turned to ask. He was marching on ahead, but not losing anything that was said. “Alice told me I couldn’t know it till I belonged, but I belong now.”

“Yes, you belong now, after having this afternoon’s meeting with us,” said Miss Ruth. “Tell him the name, Alice.”

So Alice ran ahead, put her arm around Ben’s neck, and whispered the name into his ear,—although there was no need of secrecy, since they all were members.

“Christmas Makers’ Club!” Ben said critically. “That sounds pretty important, as though you thought you were going to make Christmas.”

“But we are,” cried Elsa; “we are going to help make it for the convalescent children.”

“And for ourselves, too,” put in Betty, who had many plans in her busy brain.

“Aren’t you going to help make it for anybody, Ben?” asked Miss Ruth.

“O,—yes,” replied Ben, with the air of one who did not tell all of his secrets.

“He can make the beautifulest things,” said Alice, ever ready to praise her brother.

“I’ll make a few tops and some kites for those little chaps,” Ben said modestly, slowing his steps in order to walk with the others, for here the wood-path widened. “I used to think I would be a carpenter when I grow up, but I’ve changed my mind.”

“What do you want to do, Ben?” asked Miss Ruth, looking at the lively-faced boy whose head came almost to her shoulder.

Ben was a steady-minded, faithful lad, but he had a great imagination. “I am going to do the way they do in fairy stories,” he said; “I am going to get an old witch to help, and go to an island where there is a hidden treasure and come back and spend it. And I shall have a pony and a guinea pig and a garden of my own, and then I shall make the King a great many presents, and marry the Princess and have plenty of people to amuse me and read to me, and I shall go to bed when I choose and eat all the candy I want and have turkey every day, and I shall conquer all the world,—all except the Americans,—and my mother will be Queen—” Here Ben stopped for want of breath rather than for want of imagination.

“That is enough to take away one’s breath, Ben,” remarked Miss Ruth. “What do you want to be, Alice? You must all tell.”

“I want to be a nurse and take care of the convalescent children,” Alice said shyly.

“You will be a princess if you are my sister,” exclaimed Ben.

“What about you, Betty?” Miss Ruth asked next.

“Me! I want to be good and beautiful and sensible,” said Betty, very slowly, for her; “and, of course, I want a houseful of horses and a houseful of dogs.”

“And you, Elsa?”

Elsa was all ready for Miss Ruth’s question: “I am going to be the mother of five children and make them very, very happy,” she said with a most radiant expression on her flower-like face.

“Let’s stop here and build a bower to eat the lunch in,” exclaimed Betty, for all at once they came to a turn in the path and an open space, carpeted with soft, reddish-brown pine-needles, and surrounded by tall, straight tree trunks.

“Walk on a minute more,” urged Ben; “I know a lots better place.”

Soon another turn in the path brought them within sight of a hut, which the dense trees had hidden,—a low, wooden cabin, built of logs with the bark left on. In front of the hut was a wooden platform with a long seat, and above the seat, one wide window of many small panes of glass. It was a place to attract and charm any child.

With shouts of excitement, Betty, Elsa, and Alice, followed by Ben, leaped to the platform and the girls pressed their faces against the window, full of curiosity to see the inside of the hut.

“Nobody lives here,” explained Ben, turning to Miss Ruth, who was only a moment behind the others. “Some boys’ father had the hut built for them two-three years ago, but they have grown up and got tired of it. They let me have the key,” he added, proudly taking it from his pocket and fitting it into the door.

“I have been here before with Ben, but not very often,” said Alice, standing aside with her brother to let the others go into the hut first.

Inside, the delighted children saw a room about as large as a good-sized pantry, and in this room a round table, three stools, a chair, and a tiny, rather rusty stove; opening from this room was a smaller one, with two cot-beds. The whole place was clean and in order, for Ben had taken great delight not only in having the key but in caring for the hut.

There was a sweet, dry odour of pine-wood about the place, and the afternoon sun had made the large room quite warm. “We must surely have our lunch here,” said Miss Ruth, “though we must be quick about it, for the sunlight will soon be gone.”

“Just seats enough to go around,” said Ben; “three stools for the girls, a chair for Miss Ruth—excuse me, Miss Ruth, I ought to have said you first,—and I’ll get the wooden box that I keep in the bushes for rubbish.”

Miss Ruth quickly spread a white napkin over the little table and took out the lunch,—first a great many ginger cookies, and these were carefully laid at one side; buttered thin biscuit next, three apiece, with slices of cold turkey laid in between, and lastly, some nuts and raisins.

Four pairs of hands reached out without delay, and in a surprisingly short time, sandwiches and cookies, nuts and raisins, every one of them, had vanished. And how good everything tasted, there in the snug, warm little hut, with the fragrant odour of the pines coming in through the open door.

“I wish, if we have the Easter Club, we could buy this hut and have our meetings here,” said Elsa. The longer she stayed in the hut, the better she liked it.

“It’s near my house,” Alice said; “you can see our chimneys from the door.”

“And we could furnish the hut with a lot of things,—dishes and pictures,” cried Betty. “And we could use the little room for a storeroom!”

Elsa had been thinking of other pleasures, so she said: “We could stay here and enjoy the birds and the trees and the wild flowers, in the spring.”

“Do you think we could buy or hire the hut, Ben?” asked Miss Ruth; for it certainly was a delightful place.

“Yes, I think maybe I could manage it for you,” replied Ben, carefully brushing all the crumbs of food into the wooden box on which he had sat during the lunch.

“O, I just saw the cunningest gray squirrel!” exclaimed Elsa, running to the doorway, hoping for another glimpse of the little creature.

“You can see plenty of gray squirrels and chipmunks round here, ’most any time,” said Ben, following her. “And a man told me that last year a pair of screech-owls built their nest and raised their family in that old hollow tree there.”

Elsa listened with closest attention.

“This is a fine place to get acquainted with birds and animals,” Ben said, encouragingly. “But you never can get acquainted with them till you learn to be quiet, like them, and to walk through the woods without making twigs snap every step you take.”

Ben put the box of crumbs among the alder bushes at the side of the hut. “Mr. Gray Squirrel and his family will have those crumbs almost before we are out of sight,” he said.

“We must start for home,” called Miss Ruth, coming out from the hut with Alice and Betty.

While Ben locked the door, the others stood for a moment watching the brilliant red sunset light in the western sky. The deep baying of a hound sounded through the quiet woods. Alice drew a little nearer to Ben.

“You are all safe, Peggy,” he said, patting her hand, his thoughts busy with other things. “If I were a bird way up in the top boughs of those tall trees, you would look like grasshoppers down here,” he said, with his face turned to the sky.

“And you would look like the teentiest, tontiest little bird,” replied Betty quickly.

“I should hear what the wind was saying, ’way up there,” Ben went on; “we can’t hear such things down on the ground, ’cause people make so much noise talking. You have to keep still to learn things,” added Ben with a wise air and a serious face. Then he led the way along the path again, singing to himself softly, in a musical voice:

“There was an old man of Dumbree,

Who taught little owls to drink tea;

For he said, ‘To eat mice is not proper or nice,’

That amiable man of Dumbree.”

Soon the very tall trees grew fewer in number and the woods more open; and the path now ran between old stumps, tufts of blueberry bushes, clumps of alders, and wisps of coarse yellow-brown grass, left unweakened by the frost. A few moments later, they came out upon Berkeley Avenue, at a point where Ben and Alice would have to turn back toward their home.

“Thank you, very much, Ben, for bringing us through such an interesting, pleasant way,” said Miss Ruth; “and we shall all remember the hut.”

“And the convalescent children,” cried Elsa.

“And the Easter Club we are going to have,” put in Betty. “Don’t you tell the name of our Club, Ben!”

“No, no, no!” Ben called back,—as if a boy ever did tell secrets.

“Mamma wants the Club to meet at our house sometime soon,” Alice said in farewell, as she and Ben trotted off together.

Ben waved his scrap of a blue cap as he cried: “Good-bye, good-bye, Black Lace Lady! Good-bye, Glad Girl! Good-bye, Elsa!”

“Have you thought of a name for Elsa yet?” called out Betty, waving the now empty lunch-bag over her head frantically.

“That’s telling!” Ben answered teasingly. He had thought, but he was going to keep it to himself for awhile.

Miss Ruth, Betty, and Elsa, had not gone far on their homeward way when Mrs. Danforth overtook them, in a closed coupé with a driver in livery, who stopped the gray horse beside the group in the road. Mrs. Danforth had very often, lately, driven out on Berkeley Avenue, and several times in passing the Holts’ house she had seen a stooping-shouldered man, whom she supposed to be Mr. Holt, going to or coming from the long shed, the place where, probably, she thought, the market garden supplies were kept. The garden window frames showed just behind the house.

“Where are the others of your Club?” she asked, as she let down the coupé window. She had expected to meet all of the Club together.

“O, we came back through the woods, grandmother,” explained Elsa; “you must have met Ben and Alice just now.”

Then Mrs. Danforth remembered that she had met a boy and a girl only a short distance back, but she had not noticed them especially.

“I can take one of you home with me,” she said, looking from Miss Ruth to Elsa and then to Betty, and pulling her handsome sable furs closer up around her neck as the cool air came into the coupé.

“Thank you, Mrs. Danforth, but I enjoy walking,” replied Ruth Warren, who was entirely willing to give up the drive to one of the children.

Elsa’s face looked as if she also would rather walk; but Betty’s brown eyes were dancing with anticipation. She loved horses heartily, and next to going over the Danforth house she had wanted to ride behind that splendid gray steed. So she said, when Mrs. Danforth’s eyes rested upon her: “I should just love to ride with you,” and accordingly, Elsa’s grandmother drove off with Betty behind the spirited horse.

“Did you know I found a little girl out at the Convalescent Home who—who had Bettina?” Elsa said to Miss Ruth, as they walked along together over the hard, frozen road.

“Was it the little girl with the bright dark eyes, whom I saw you with?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Did you hear what she said?” Elsa asked.

“I didn’t hear what either you or the little girl said, because I was talking with Miss Hartwell; but I saw that you were greatly interested about something: and it was your own doll Bettina. Were you glad?”

“It—it was exciting to—to see Bettina,” Elsa said, swallowing a lump in her throat, “and then when—when I asked the little girl to—let me name the doll—I wanted her to be called Bettina—the little girl said that her nurse’s name was Bettina, but she had gone away. Do you suppose it could be my old Bettina,—Bettina March?” Elsa asked, looking anxiously into Miss Ruth’s face, half in hope, half in uncertainty.

“You did not think to inquire of Miss Hartwell?” questioned Miss Ruth.

“I—I thought, but I didn’t quite dare to,” Elsa replied desolately.

“Don’t think too much about the matter, Elsa, because it might be Bettina Smith or Bettina anybody; but I will find out for you,” said Miss Ruth, thinking how plucky Elsa had been about the doll.

“O, thank you, Miss Ruth,” Elsa said very gratefully and in a much relieved tone.

“Doesn’t your old nurse write to you?”

“No,” Elsa answered slowly. “Grandmother said it was better for me to learn to get along without Bettina—so—so I suppose that’s the reason she doesn’t write to me.”

Ruth Warren did not ask any further questions. But she felt that she knew better than ever why Elsa was such a pale-faced child and why there was so often a shadow of something sad in her eyes.

“Do you think I ought to tell grandmother about—about my going over to your house the other night?” Elsa asked suddenly, as the question came into her mind for almost the hundredth time.

“Might not your grandmother’s feelings be hurt because you went to somebody else instead of going to her, with your—your trouble?”

“Perhaps,” Elsa answered, in a doubtful tone, though.

“If she were to ask you about it, you would of course tell her. But when telling a thing unnecessarily means the possibility of hurting somebody’s feelings, then even little girls can help make the world happier by keeping things to themselves. Are you willing, Elsa, to have me tell your grandmother, or anybody else, if ever the time comes when it seems best?”

“Yes, Miss Ruth,” cried Elsa, feeling as if a great weight had rolled from her heart. “Of course grandmother didn’t know how much I loved that doll. She didn’t even know I had her.”

After this talk, Elsa felt that she and Miss Ruth were to be good friends for always.

Betty White spent the first few moments of the drive in watching the strong, easy pulling of the gray horse. Then she turned to Mrs. Danforth with a question which greatly interested her and which she thought there could never be a better time to ask.

Now Betty was the frankest of little girls; so she spoke out very bluntly: “Why do you make Elsa mind so—so hard?”

Mrs. Danforth, being greatly amazed, was surprised into saying “What?”

“Why don’t you let Elsa decide things sometimes for herself?” Betty’s brown eyes met the surprised look in Mrs. Danforth’s blue eyes very fearlessly. “Mother lets me decide things—she says it is good for me to have re-responsibleness.” Betty stumbled a little over the long word, but she kept on: “So if mother tells me I better come home from anywhere about five o’clock, and if I want to stay a little longer, and they want me to, I just stay, and then I tell her afterward, and if she doesn’t like it, we talk it over.”

Betty leaned back against the soft cushions in comfort. This matter was off her mind!

Mrs. Danforth did not give any reply.

“I—I think the other way makes children afraid of you,” Betty added bravely.

Still Mrs. Danforth kept her eyes straight ahead, upon the coachman’s broad shoulders. Presently she asked: “Was that the Holt children’s father in front of their house, Elizabeth?”

“We didn’t come back past the Holts’ house,” Betty replied, “but that couldn’t have been Alice’s and Ben’s father. It must have been the hired man. Mr. Holt is a teacher, and he is way out in the West somewhere, because he isn’t very well. They miss him dreadfully.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Mrs. Danforth. And Betty felt like a naughty child, though she could not have told why.

Betty’s mother was just turning toward her home, when Mrs. Danforth’s coupé stopped, and Betty flew out like a small whirlwind.

Mrs. Danforth lowered the coupé window and leaning forward, said: “Mrs. White, I wish my little Elsa were as rosy and strong as your Elizabeth.” She always spoke Betty’s full name,—Elizabeth.

Mrs. White noticed the unusually gentle expression upon the proud face. She had wanted a good opportunity to speak to Mrs. Danforth about Elsa; so, with the same frankness which Betty had shown, she said: “There is no use in trying to bring children up without love, Mrs. Danforth. You cannot make strong, happy, useful men and women without it.”

Mrs. Danforth did not seem offended; though her eyes gleamed proudly from under her heavy brows, and a slight colour rose on her cheeks. Her voice was rather hoarse as she said to Mrs. White, with a cold smile: “Your daughter Elizabeth is very much like you.” Then she bowed good-bye, and ordered the coachman to drive on.

“You forgot to thank Mrs. Danforth for the drive, Betty,” said Mrs. White, as they walked up the steps together.

“So I did, mother. That is too bad,” Betty answered, penitently, slipping her hand into her mother’s arm. “But Mrs. Danforth kind of stiffens me up and makes me forget things. Aren’t grandmothers ever as nice as mothers? I don’t know, because I haven’t any grandmothers.”

“Yes, Betty, they are often better, or at least children think so. But there are a great many different kinds of mothers and grandmothers.”

“I know I’ve got the best kind of mother!” exclaimed Betty joyfully.

That evening, after Elsa had shaken hands, said good night, and gone up to her white room, Mrs. Danforth, alone in her luxurious library, sat quiet for a long time, thinking deeply about many things, especially about the real purpose which had brought her to live in Berkeley.

CHAPTER IV
THE CLUB GOES VISITING

By sports like these are all their cares beguiled.

—Oliver Goldsmith.

“I DON’T know but I shall have to ask you not to let the children come to their Club this afternoon. I don’t like the noise, and you know almost anything brings on heart trouble,” Miss Virginia Warren said, when she came down to the library the next Friday morning, followed by her niece, carrying two shawls. She spent an hour down-stairs daily, after the rooms had been made excessively warm.

“But, Aunt Virginia, you always stay in your room after three o’clock, and it is so far from the library that you could hardly hear any noise. I will keep the doors shut, though. I should be sorry indeed to disappoint the children,” Ruth Warren replied, quite troubled by her aunt’s words.

“Well, of course the children are of more importance than my feelings,” said Miss Virginia with a sigh. “But even though I don’t hear their noise, knowing they are there, and that I may hear them any minute, gives me cold turns every now and then.” She shivered, as if at the mere thought. “Put that thick shawl over me quickly, Ruth.”

The doctor had many times told Ruth Warren that there was nothing really the matter with her aunt except a strong imagination and a constant fear of illness; he had advised her, too, not to give in too much to her aunt’s notions. So now Ruth said: “I am sorry, Aunt Virginia, that the children’s coming disturbs you. I will ask Sarah to stay in the room with you this afternoon so that you will not feel nervous.”

“Nervous! I am never nervous,” replied Miss Virginia, waving her large white hands excitedly. “But I shall have to have a regular nurse, so that there will be somebody with me all the time.” Then she wept a little, and felt faint, and had to be revived with spirits of ammonia.

Fortunately, however, she was spared further excitement on account of the children’s coming that day. For just before three o’clock, Ben Holt drove up to the house with a large, loose-jointed brown horse and a double-seated sleigh, jumped out, rang the door-bell, and asked for Miss Ruth. He was sitting on a tall carved chair in the hall when Ruth Warren came down, at Sarah’s summons.

“I stayed at home from school this afternoon,” said Ben, springing to his feet and looking as if his sturdy body would burst out from the tight little blue jacket. “Alice has hurt her ankle, and she wants the Club to meet at our house, and so does my mother, and will you come? I’ve brought Jerry and the double-seated sleigh. See?” And Ben drew aside the lace curtain of the hall window to display his steed and chariot.

“Yes, I will go with pleasure,” Ruth Warren answered, after one swift, amused glance at the big-boned horse and the sleigh.

“Then I’ll just wait here till the other children come, if you please,” Ben said, unbuttoning his jacket and drawing a long breath.

“Will your horse stand?” asked Ruth Warren, wondering if Ben meant to include her as one of the children.

“O, yes, he’s glad enough to have a chance to stand,” the boy said with a twinkle of humour.

Ruth Warren went up-stairs to tell her aunt of the change of plan.

“You are not going off with a crowd of children in that old sleigh, Ruth, are you? Some of your friends will be sure to see you,” objected Miss Virginia, in great and sudden distress.

“Only three children, Aunt Virginia; and what if my friends do see me?”

“But it looks so queer—the sleigh, I mean,—like a country grocery sled, with an extra seat put in.” Miss Virginia grew quite excited.

“I believe it is called a pung,” said Ruth; “never mind, Aunt Virginia, nobody whom I care for will like me any the less for going in it. Good-bye,—there come Betty and Elsa now, and you can watch us start,” she added, for her aunt’s chair was always drawn close to the front window. “You will have a quiet house all to yourself this afternoon.”

“It will be too quiet, I am afraid,” sighed Miss Virginia. “I do like to hear a little something going on, here all alone as I am, though not children’s voices.”

Miss Virginia Warren did not mean to be selfish, but she had never learned that there is something sweeter in life than taking anxious care of one’s health and thinking about one’s self.

Ben had seen Betty and Elsa on their way home from school and told them; so they were there all ready to start when Miss Ruth came down-stairs in her long, black, fur-lined coat.

Mrs. Danforth had surprised Elsa that noon by saying: “Elsa, when you are with your little Club, and all of you want to do anything together, like going to the Convalescent Home, you may do it without coming to ask me; and you may stay a little later than five o’clock if coming away earlier would spoil your good time.” Elsa felt very grown-up, with this new freedom, and yet the first use she made of it was to run home to tell her grandmother that the Club was to meet at Alice’s! It happened, however, that Mrs. Danforth was out driving; and then Elsa felt more than ever grateful to her grandmother, because, as she explained to Miss Ruth, “If grandmother hadn’t said I could do anything the Club wanted to, I couldn’t have gone to Alice’s, because grandmother wasn’t at home to ask.”

Betty listened intently, but wisely kept still. She was dancing around in great impatience for the start; she had on a long gray fur boa of her mother’s, and as there had been no one to remind Elsa to wear something extra warm, Miss Ruth bundled her into the dark red golf cape.

Soon the little party set forth,—to Miss Virginia’s horror, though she waved her hand feebly in return to the merry farewells from Miss Ruth and Elsa on the back seat of the pung, and from Betty perched up beside the blue-coated driver of the loose-jointed horse.

Ben began clucking his steed into a faster gait.

“What a good, steady horse you have, Ben,” said Miss Ruth; and indeed the horse was pulling well on the road toward home.

“It’s a good thing to have a horse that will stand and that people aren’t afraid of,” Ben said loyally. “I can do anything with this horse. G’long, Jerry!”

The old horse, as if to justify the praise, went briskly. The sleighing was smooth, for there had been two or three snow-storms the past week. It was a rather sharp and wintry afternoon, cloudy, with every once in awhile a flurry of snow in large, star-shaped flakes.

“See how well Nature has tucked her children in, since we walked out here a week ago,” said Miss Ruth, as the sleigh, with merrily jingling bells, slid along the quieter part of Berkeley Avenue, where now masses of soft snow lined the roadside. “And there will soon be a thicker blanket put on, to keep them warm and safe until spring.”

“Think of the hut, all covered with snow,” Elsa said. “How pretty it must look.”

“Wouldn’t it be fun if we could sleigh-ride over to the Convalescent Home and see the children again,” exclaimed Betty, remembering the last Friday afternoon and their visit.

“But what about Alice waiting at home for us?” Miss Ruth asked quickly.

“O, I forgot,” Betty cried.

“I expect she’s wondering where we are,” exclaimed Ben. “G’long, Jerry!”

But Jerry did not need urging now, for a moment later Ben turned into the driveway which led to the rambling house with a piazza in front, out upon which looked many long, narrow windows, filled with bright-flowering plants, chiefly scarlet geraniums,—a cozy, cheerful home indeed.

Mrs. Holt was already at the front door,—a young woman in a plain dark blue dress with dainty lace collar and cuffs, and so slender and graceful that she looked more like an older sister of Ben’s than his mother. Quite a warm colour bloomed on her pretty face as she shook hands with Miss Ruth, whom Ben introduced by saying “This is the Black Lace Lady.”

“I am very happy to meet you, Miss Warren. Betty White I already know. And this is Elsa Danforth? Come in, please. Alice has been growing very impatient for your arrival,” Mrs. Holt said, with a gentle and well-bred hospitality.

The front door opened directly into a quite large hall, evidently the living-room. There was a glowing fire in the old-fashioned fireplace opposite the door, a low bookcase on one side of the fireplace and a piano on the other; the stairs were at one end of the room, and folding-doors opened into the dining-room at the opposite end. On a chintz-covered lounge close to the front windows sat Alice in a blue wrapper the colour of her eyes, and with one foot stretched out, covered with an afghan. Her face flushed with pleasure: “O, I am so glad you all came,” she said, as they drew around her. “I fell on some ice, coming home from school yesterday, and twisted my ankle a little, the doctor said, so I couldn’t come to the Club, and so we invited you here. What shall we do?” she asked, leaning back against the gay chintz pillows and looking like a large, sweet-faced doll with softly dimpled cheeks.

“I brought some of the dolls’ dresses—there are yet eight more to make,” Miss Ruth said, taking a package from the deep pocket of her fur-lined coat. “We can sew on those for one thing to do.”

“I have made my last week’s two dresses,” cried Alice, pulling them in very rumpled condition from under a sofa pillow, while Elsa and Betty dived into their coat pockets, each bringing out two dresses, all finished.

“Good!” said Miss Ruth, taking off her coat and hat, at Mrs. Holt’s bidding. “Perhaps we can each do two to-day—though these are for the largest dolls.”

“I will gladly help you sew,” Mrs. Holt said. “Alice has told me that the dolls are to be given away at Christmas: that is all I know about it,” she added, smiling in a motherly, understanding way. She had a pretty, rather sad face and a very tender look in her blue eyes. It was a great grief to her to be parted from her husband, and there was another grief which lay further back in her heart.

Even in the few moments of their talking together, Ruth Warren had decided that Mrs. Holt was a very charming woman, and just the kind of a mother Ben and Alice might be expected to have.

Elsa and Betty had drawn their chairs very near to Alice and were telling her all that had happened in school that morning, when Ben came in from having put the horse into the barn, and walked up to his mother’s side with “What shall we do?”

“O, I know what to do,” he exclaimed, answering his own question. “We will have a show.”

“Goody!” cried Betty, hearing his last words.

Mrs. Holt entered at once into the plan. “Miss Warren and Alice and I will be audience. You can manage your show with Betty and Elsa to help, I think.”

“But what about the dolls’ dresses?” Elsa asked, eager as she was for the “show.”

“Bless the dear child!” said Mrs. Holt, putting her arm around the slight, black-gowned figure. “Miss Warren and I will sew fast enough to do your share and Betty’s.” She gazed intently into Elsa’s face as if she would like to question the child about something.

“O, thank you,” Elsa said, gratefully. “Why, that picture is just like one my grandmother has in her room,” she exclaimed, catching sight of an oil-painting of a large, gable-windowed house.

As Ruth Warren saw Mrs. Holt’s face grow crimson and then suddenly very pale, some faint, puzzling resemblance flashed through her mind and was gone as quickly.

Before Mrs. Holt had any time to answer, Ben ran toward her and laid his hand coaxingly upon her shoulder: “Now, mother of mine, I have brought the ‘show’ things down from the garret, and the pink gauze curtain; and please can we use the red light?”

“Yes, my boy. What shows are you going to have?” Mrs. Holt’s voice was not quite steady, but she had regained her composure.

“You will see in just a little while, mother of mine,” said Ben, with the air of one who speaks to an over-eager child.

Then, while Mrs. Holt explained to Miss Ruth and Elsa that the pink cheese-cloth curtain was used to make the show-figures look more beautiful, and that the red light, which made them even more beautiful, was brought out only on great occasions like birthdays or holidays, Elsa forgot all about the oil-painting; and very soon after, Ben called her to join Betty and him in the parlour, which opened off the hall, at the foot of the stairs. “Turn your backs, please,” cried Ben; “you mustn’t see what is going to happen.”

“Ben is such a manly little fellow,” said Miss Ruth, rising to change her position.

Quick tears sprang into Mrs. Holt’s blue eyes. “He tries to take care of me,” she replied, with a little tremble in her voice; “my dear little boy,” she added, half under her breath. “He is a great help in the gardening we do, winter and summer, although I have a good man to take the principal care. But I am sorry to have the children away from their father. We hope it will not be very long before he can come back to us, or we go to him.”

“Mr. Holt is a teacher, I believe,” said Ruth Warren, who found herself growing much interested in the Holt family.

“Yes, out in Colorado; he had to go there for his health, and that is why we are here,” was the reply, given with quiet dignity.

Ruth Warren liked Mrs. Holt all the better because she did not attempt to make any apology for keeping a market-garden, or to explain their poverty, which was evident from the shabby furniture and plain clothing.

“I wish they would begin,” sighed Alice, who was feeling rather left out of things and who had all this time kept her eyes turned away from the stairs, where mysterious preparations were going on.

“You may turn ’round now,” called out Ben, starting the red light. So the audience faced expectantly toward the stage which was formed by the wide landing four steps up the stairway.

Ben, jerking back the pink curtain, announced in a deep, dramatic tone: “Priscilla, the Puritan Maiden.”

Beside a real spinning-wheel sat Elsa with a white cap over her golden hair and a white kerchief across her shoulders,—a demure little Puritan maiden, her face very rosy under the red light.

The applause from the audience was hearty and prolonged. Alice clapped louder than any one else. But after the curtain was drawn forward, she slipped her hand into her mother’s and said wistfully, “I do wish my foot was well so I could be in the shows.”

“Think of the little Convalescent children, my darling,” said Mrs. Holt in a low tone, replacing the afghan which Alice had restlessly pushed away. “Think how some of them keep still all the time.”

A moment later Alice’s face dimpled with smiles as Ben drew aside the curtain and said in his stage voice: “Little Red Riding-hood.”

It was Betty in a short red cape and a tightly drawn red hood. With the red light falling upon her round cheeks and her laughing eyes, she looked indeed like a little maid from the fields.

“Doesn’t the Glad Girl make a splendid Red Riding-hood?” cried Ben, turning a somersault on the hearth-rug. “And wouldn’t the wolf have a fine time eating her up!” he added, capering back to draw the curtain.

Red Riding-hood herself announced the next show, “George Washington,” who was no other than Ben, standing on a large book covered with white cloth to represent a block of ice, and wearing a cock-hat and an old military coat which came down to his heels—a brave-faced Father of his Country.

“You forgot to say ‘Crossing the Delaware,’ Betty,” exclaimed the show-figure, leaning forward on his very thick sword made out of the fire-tongs covered with brown paper.

“Of course they would know that,” Betty replied; and the audience agreed that they would have known it without being told.

“Just one more,” cried Ben, stepping from off the block of ice to help Betty draw the curtain. “This one’s going to take a very long time to get ready, and you must guess the name of it. May I whisper to the Black Lace Lady, mother?”

Mrs. Holt nodded permission, and Ben whispered something into Miss Ruth’s ear, to which she must have agreed, for he carried her heavy coat into the parlour, where Betty and Elsa were, and shut the door.

It took so long for them to arrange this last show that Mrs. Holt and Miss Ruth finished making the first of the dolls’ dresses, and Mrs. Holt was sewing upon the second one for Alice, when Betty called “Ready!” and pulled back the curtain to disclose a marvellous sight.

There stood Elsa, behind a wall of sofa pillows, her hair floating down over the light blue silk scarf which covered her shoulders and her slender figure draped in a dark blue velvet table-cover, while on her shoulder perched a stuffed gray squirrel. On the step below the pillow-wall knelt Ben, wearing Miss Ruth’s long coat with the gray fur lining side out, his head and arms covered with Betty’s gray boa. This strange-looking figure was pulling with his teeth at a sofa pillow in the supposed wall, and repeating, in a muffled voice: “Keep a good heart! Keep a good heart!”

“Princess Katrina and the Gray Owl!” Alice cried out, the moment her eyes fell upon this group. “How lovely, how lovely!” she said over and over again, clapping her hands. Mrs. Holt and Ruth Warren joined in the applause, laughing until the tears came into their eyes, for Ben was such a ridiculously funny figure, although so well made up.

Elsa kept still as long as she could; then the stuffed gray squirrel fell from her shoulder, and Ben, springing to catch it, knocked down the wall of pillows, and the show was over.

“How did you ever happen to think of it?” Alice asked, when the flushed and happy actors stood around the lounge, taking off their costumes.

“Elsa thought of it,” cried Betty, who was holding the stuffed squirrel tenderly.

“Betty made me take the princess part, though I wanted her to,” said Elsa.

“Because she has yellow hair, like the princess,” put in Ben. “Betty dressed us, and didn’t she do well? Your coat was just the thing,” he added, turning as Miss Ruth rose to help him out of it. “My! it’s hot.”

“Did you know what it was, Mrs. Holt?” Elsa inquired, coming to Mrs. Holt’s side.

“Yes, dear, for Alice has told the story to Ben and me, twice.”

“Do your children tell you stories?” Elsa asked, with wide-open, surprised eyes.

“Sometimes, Elsa,” Mrs. Holt replied. “I sit by the fire the last part of the afternoon, usually, and the children lie on pillows in front of the fire; and if I am too tired to tell them a story, they tell me one.”

“And do they have shows often?” Elsa questioned eagerly. This was almost like a storybook, this account of the happy home-life.

“Yes; they keep a boxful of costumes and that pink curtain on purpose for shows. They get up all sorts of plays, too,” Mrs. Holt went on to say, seeing the keen interest in Elsa’s face. “Last summer they played snake until it got on my imagination so that I hardly dared step on the floor for fear of putting my foot on that snake.”

“It wasn’t really a snake, though,” said Betty, who had turned to listen.

“No, only a make-believe one,” Mrs. Holt replied laughingly; “but they made it seem real.”

“But, mother of mine,” said Ben very earnestly, “you know I only got Peggy to play that so as to teach her not to be afraid of snakes.”

“Girls!” exclaimed Ruth Warren, “it is quarter of five o’clock, and snowing fast. We must begin to get ready to go home.” She realized that it would take considerable time.

“Mamma, dear, I wish Elsa and Betty could stay here all night,” cried Alice. Betty had stayed before, once.

“They could perfectly well, Alice,” replied Mrs. Holt cordially, “if Elsa’s grandmother and Betty’s mother were willing.”

“Let’s telephone and ask,” suggested Ben.

“I think my mother will let me stay,” Betty said quickly, standing on tip-toe in her excitement, “because it’s Friday and no school to-morrow. May I telephone now?”

In a few moments Betty came back from the side-hall: “Yes, mother says I can stay, if Mrs. Holt is sure I won’t be a bother. Aren’t you going to telephone about staying?” she asked, turning to Elsa, who had been silent all this time, although her eyes showed how much she wanted to stay.

“I—I don’t believe grandmother would let me,” Elsa replied, making a brave effort to keep a steady face.

“Why don’t you ask her for Elsa, mamma?” inquired Alice. “Do, mother of mine,” urged Ben.

Mrs. Holt’s face flushed, then grew pale, and a look of pride came over it. “I cannot do that, children, much as I would like to have Elsa remain.”

“I will ask Mrs. Danforth,” Ruth Warren said quickly, going to the telephone. Presently she returned to the impatient group and said in a cheerful tone:

“Elsa’s grandmother wants her to come home. She asks me to say to you, Elsa, that you will not be sorry you came.”

But even this last part of the message could not keep Elsa from turning quickly away, toward the window, to hide her feelings.

“I will go and harness Jerry,” said Ben, hurrying out of the room. The others talked very fast for a few moments.

“I wish you could stay all night, Miss Ruth,” Alice said more hospitably than thoughtfully, when Miss Ruth was putting on her coat.

“There is no use in my thinking of it,” Miss Ruth answered quickly: “my Aunt Virginia would never give her consent.”

It was so funny to think of grown-up Miss Ruth having to mind that Elsa, feeling comforted, came away from the window and began to get ready for the drive home.

“I hope Alice’s ankle will be well before the next meeting,” said Miss Ruth, when they were at last ready to start.

“It will be quite well in a week, unless she is careless, or takes cold,” Mrs. Holt replied. “I am sure she is most grateful to the Club, as I am, for your coming here.”

Ben, who had driven Jerry up to the front door and come in to warm his hands, carelessly picked up a sofa pillow in passing, and shied it at Alice. “That’s just to show Peggy that she must keep quiet, no matter what happens,” he said in answer to his mother’s reproving: “Why, Ben!”

Betty had sprung to Alice’s defence, and for a moment she and Ben had a lively pulling contest over the pillow. Elsa looked on in surprise; not having any brothers or sisters, she was not used to that kind of fun and hardly knew what to make of it.

Suddenly Betty dropped her corner of the pillow. “Excuse me,” she said to Mrs. Holt; “I forgot. Ben threw that pillow at Alice just the way Max throws one at me sometimes, and I have to defend myself.”

“You will have a lively time to-night, Mrs. Holt,” Ruth Warren said, with a sober face and smiling eyes.

“Children must be children,” Mrs. Holt replied with an answering smile. “It is better for Alice to have things a little lively than to lie here and feel lonely. But I think that she and Betty will be studying over to-day’s lessons after supper.”

“O, mamma! with my lame ankle!” protested Alice. And Betty’s face fell a little.

“Yes, dear, you must study awhile; it will not hurt your ankle. You say that Betty is always ahead of you in your classes, so she can be the teacher.” Mrs. Holt said this partly to cheer Betty and partly so that Elsa would not go away thinking that the visit she was missing would be all pleasure.

“We haven’t any more dolls’ dresses to make, Miss Ruth,” Alice said, handing to her a pile of neatly folded little light-coloured garments. “What shall we do next?”

“I will have something ready at the next meeting, Alice,—something that perhaps Ben can help upon,” replied Ruth Warren, kissing Alice good-bye, and thinking that it would be hard to find two more lovable and companionable children than Alice and Ben, or a happier, more satisfying home-life than theirs.

“Just think, only two weeks more of school,” cried Betty. “Maybe the Club can meet twice a week in vacation?” Betty looked at Miss Ruth questioningly.

“O, I wish it could!” Alice clasped her chubby hands together beseechingly.

Ruth Warren shook her head, but with that kind look in her eyes which always made any refusal seem less hard. “Once a week is enough for us really to enjoy it,” she said, “don’t you think so, Betty dear?”

“I suppose so,” Betty admitted with her usual candour; “only I don’t ever have half so good a time anywhere else.”

“Come, Elsa, we must start,” Miss Ruth said, adding, as she shook hands with Mrs. Holt: “I should like to call upon you some day soon.”

“I should be delighted to have you call,” replied Mrs. Holt, warmly. “I have made only a few acquaintances in Berkeley during the year I have lived here. Betty’s mother has been very kind about coming to see me. Children often bring together people who might not otherwise meet,” she added, smoothing back Betty’s rumpled hair in a gentle, motherly fashion.

“We will show you the market-garden when you come again,” Ben said with an air of pride. “It’s a very interesting place.”

“Yes, you might enjoy that, Miss Warren,” said Mrs. Holt with a gentle dignity. “We have a large winter-garden, back of the house, and this year, in addition to vegetables, we are raising hyacinths and such things, and later, we are going to try raising mushrooms.”

“That sounds most delightful,” said Miss Ruth heartily; “I am sure I shall enjoy seeing it all.”

“Perhaps you would like to come, also,” Mrs. Holt said, rather timidly it seemed, turning to Elsa.

“O, yes, I should,” cried Elsa eagerly. “I think you are very kind to little girls, and,” she added shyly, trying to be very polite, “you—you have beautiful flowers.”

“Children and flowers—I’ve never had enough of them yet,” exclaimed Mrs. Holt, stooping suddenly to kiss Elsa’s upturned face.

It was snowing hard. Ben tucked Miss Ruth and Elsa into the back seat and then mounted to the front seat. Mrs. Holt, Alice, and Betty waved good-bye from the front windows, Miss Ruth and Elsa waved back as long as they could see the house; and the gay, pleasant meeting was over.

Elsa was always so happy in being with Miss Ruth that once the pang of leaving had vanished, she settled down with a contented sigh. It was a beautiful time to be out-of-doors. Now that the snow was falling in thick soft flakes, the chill had gone out of the air. The tall evergreen trees drooped under their heavy white cloaks. In the west there was a faint rosy tinge from the light of the setting sun. Now and then a loud-cawing crow flew overhead, and once, by the roadside, they saw a hungry blue-jay flirt the snow off from a tall brown weed and begin to pick out and eat the seeds.

The three talked awhile of the sights and sounds around them. Then Ben turned his entire attention to Jerry, who needed constant urging for this journey away from home, at the end of the day.

“I asked Miss Hartwell a day or two ago about the nurse Bettina; and her name is Bettina March,” Miss Ruth said, unexpectedly.

“O my Bettina!” cried Elsa, with a little gasp. “And is she coming back?”

“Possibly,” Miss Ruth replied. “She was at the Convalescent Home only about six weeks, and went away because she was not very well; but if she is better, she is coming back about Christmas-time.”

“Then I shall see her,—grandmother will surely let me see her; but it won’t be for three whole weeks!” The little thrill of disappointment in Elsa’s voice told Ruth Warren better than words could have told, how dearly Elsa loved her old nurse.

“Of course she may not come back at all, Elsa,” Ruth Warren felt obliged to say.

To this Elsa made no reply; but she asked, in a rather choked voice: “Did you find out where Bettina is now?”

“No, Elsa,” Miss Ruth answered gently. She felt very sorry for Elsa’s disappointment, but she did not wish in any way to interfere with Mrs. Danforth’s plan for the child.

Ben, perched upon the front seat, was beginning to look as if he had on a white fur coat. They were just driving along Washington Avenue, approaching the Warren house, when Elsa exclaimed rapturously: “Uncle Ned! O, there is my Uncle Ned!”

A tall, broad-shouldered man, who was strolling by in leisurely fashion, looked up and then stepped quickly toward the sleigh as Ben stopped his horse in front of the Warrens’ house. Elsa was out in a flash, and the tall man was bending over, soothing the child who clung to him so passionately.

“SOOTHING THE CHILD WHO CLUNG TO HIM SO PASSIONATELY.”

“Uncle Ned! When did you come?” Elsa asked between laughter and tears.

“Less than an hour ago. I reached the house only a few moments before your grandmother was telephoning about you.”

“I am so glad, now, that I came home,” cried the child, still clinging to him as if she could hardly believe her happiness in really having him here.

Ben had meanwhile jumped out and was gallantly helping Miss Ruth from the sleigh. Elsa was far too excited to think of introductions.

“This is your friend, Miss Ruth, Elsa?” asked the tall uncle, taking off his hat.

“Yes—excuse me—this is Miss Ruth, our Club—our Christmas Makers’ Club—” cried Elsa, telling the name before she thought.

“Miss Ruth looks more like a tall young lady than a Club,—even a Christmas Makers’ Club,” said Elsa’s uncle gravely.

“Uncle Ned! I mean that she runs the Club,” cried Elsa in half distressed, half-laughing tone.

“Yes, I run the Club,” said Ruth Warren quickly. The arc-light overhead shone brightly. The snow was on her long eyelashes and her face was flushed with the fresh air.

“I am grateful to you if my little niece has caught her red cheeks from the running,” was the instant reply.

“Here is another member of the Club,” Ruth Warren said, turning to Ben, “Ben Holt, the only boy in the Club.”

“Another red-cheeked member! I quite approve of this Club,” said the tall uncle, who had dark gray eyes, somewhat like Elsa’s. “Does the Club drive you, or do you drive the Club, sir?” he asked, in his quick way of speaking.

“Sometimes one, sometimes the other, sir,” Ben replied merrily. “I am the only one that takes them driving, though, because I have such a safe, steady horse.”

“He looks like a good safe horse, Ben,” said Elsa’s uncle, gravely and politely.

Ben climbed back into the sleigh and began turning Jerry. “Good-bye! Perhaps you’ll come to the Club sometimes, as long as you are Elsa’s uncle,” he called out in friendly fashion; “it meets Friday afternoons. Good-bye, Black Lace Lady! Good-bye, Elsa!”

“Thank you,” the tall uncle called out, for Jerry, headed toward home, started off in a hurry; “I am afraid I shall not be here until another meeting.”

The boy and the angular horse vanished amid the thick-falling snow.

“How long are you going to stay, Uncle Ned?” asked Elsa, in a most anxious voice.

“Only over night, Sweetheart,” he answered quickly, “but we mustn’t let that spoil our visit. What is the name of this wonderful Club?”

“Didn’t you hear me say it?” Elsa asked.

But Uncle Ned had forgotten.

“It’s a secret,” said Elsa; “you can’t know it unless you belong.”

“It is a very exclusive Club, you see, Mr. Danforth,” said Miss Ruth, turning toward the walk which led from the pavement to her home.

“That makes me want to join all the more,” came the laughing answer.

“I can tell you just this much, Uncle Ned,” cried Elsa, unfastening Miss Ruth’s golf cape, “we are making things for Christmas.”

“And does Miss Ruth live here in the house next to your grandmother’s?” asked the tall uncle, taking the cape from Elsa.

“Yes; she lives all alone with her aunt, just the way I live all alone with grandmother,” Elsa said, a little sadly.

“You ought to be very good friends,” said the uncle, soberly, for he had noticed the change in Elsa’s tone.

“We are,” replied Ruth Warren convincingly.

“Yes, we are,” echoed Elsa in a happy voice now.

“Let me go ahead on your path and make some tracks for you, the snow is so deep,” suggested Mr. Danforth, quickly stepping forward. So Ruth Warren followed in his footsteps, and Elsa brought up in the rear.

At the door, Elsa’s uncle put out his hand and said in a grateful voice: “My little niece has written me about you, Miss Warren, and I want to thank you for all that you are doing to make her happy.”

“Elsa and her friends give me a great deal of pleasure,” said Miss Ruth in turn, with an unmistakable ring of sincerity in her voice.

“Will the Club meet here next Friday?” asked Elsa eagerly.

“Yes, next Friday; and we shall have something new to work upon,” Miss Ruth replied.

“Will you give Miss Ruth her cape, Uncle Ned?” asked Elsa. “She let me take it for our sleigh-ride. I wonder what the new thing is going to be,” she added, with lively interest.

But Miss Ruth only smiled and said: “Wait and see!”

As Elsa’s Uncle Ned took off his hat in farewell, Ruth Warren saw that his hair was quite gray and that his face had the careworn look of a very busy man. Elsa herself seemed like another girl since her uncle had come.

Miss Virginia Warren had left the shade up, at her front window, and had seen Ruth’s meeting with the tall man whom Elsa Danforth had greeted so affectionately.

“There, Ruth!” said Miss Virginia when her niece came into her room; “I was sure something would happen! What could that young gentleman have thought of your being in that dreadful old sleigh?”

“It was Elsa’s uncle, and he is not so very young, Aunt Virginia; I am sure he is forty, and his hair is gray,” replied Ruth Warren. “I don’t believe he was thinking of me at all; he seemed so rejoiced that Elsa’s cheeks were red instead of white that I don’t believe he thought about anything or anybody else.”

But Miss Virginia was not to be pacified: “You do such strange things, Ruth, for a young woman of your social position, and thirty years old, too,” she sighed; “going off in that pung, was it, you called it? with a lot of children, and to a market-gardener’s home.”

Ruth Warren, leaving the first part of her aunt’s remark without answer, made haste to say: “Mrs. Holt is in every sense a lady, and I shall call upon her at the very first opportunity.”

Miss Virginia dropped the subject, and said in a more kindly tone: “I really hope the Club will come here next week; I begin to think, as Sarah does, that it is rather pleasant to hear their young voices in this quiet old house. We missed them this afternoon.”

In this change of mind on the part of Miss Virginia, Ruth Warren recognized Sarah Judd’s influence; for behind an iron exterior, this trusty old serving-woman had a heart of gold.

CHAPTER V
A LITTLE OLD LADY’S DOLL

Something the heart must have to cherish.

—Henry W. Longfellow.

THE next Monday afternoon Elsa and Alice went home from school with Betty to talk over a plan which Elsa had said, with a very mysterious air, that she wanted to tell them about. Finding that the baby was not in the nursery, Betty took her friends to this delightful room, with the flowering geraniums and the little strawberry-birds and the row of dolls, the gay pillows of the window-seat, and the Kate Greenaway paper.

“I should think you would stay here all the time, Betty,” exclaimed Elsa, curling herself into a little heap on the rug, and leaning back against the bed; her eyes began roaming around the “picture-book room,” as she called it to herself.

“I do stay here half of the time,—all night,” Betty answered quickly. “That’s half the time when you have to go to bed at eight o’clock! Now tell us about your secret.” Betty sat down near the door, to guard the approach, and Alice drew a small rocking-chair close to the shelf of plants, so that she could watch the lively little strawberry-birds.

“It’s this,” said Elsa; “when my Uncle Ned was here, last Friday, he asked me ever and ever so much about the Club, and I told him about our dressing dolls for the Convalescent Home children, and about how much they needed money; and he thought it would be nice if we could earn some money,—no matter if it was just a little,—and surprise Miss Ruth, and have it to give to the Convalescent Home with the dolls on Christmas Day.” Elsa’s eyes were shining with interest.