ng to work when I'm sixteen.
Then I'll have my own money to spend."

"And Elizabeth is nearly eighteen and can't work for herself because she
spends all her time working for the rest of you at home," said Olga.

A startled look flashed into the sharp black eyes. Sadie had actually
never before thought of that.

Olga went on, "I guess you'd miss Elizabeth at home if she should go
away to work, but she ought to do it as soon as she is eighteen. And if
she should, you'd have to do some of the kitchen work, wouldn't you? And
maybe then you wouldn't have a chance to go away and earn money for
yourself."

"Is she going to do that--go off to work when she's eighteen?" Sadie
demanded, plainly disturbed at the suggestion.

"Everybody would say she had a right to. Most girls would have gone long
ago--you know it, Sadie. You'd better make things easier for her at home
if you want to keep her there."

"How?" Sadie's voice was despondent now. "Father gets so little
pay--we're pinched all the time."

"Yet _you_ have good clothes and money for your silver work----"

"Well, I have to just tease it out of mother. You don't know how I have
to tease."

Olga could imagine. "Well," she said, "the girls all guess how it is
about Elizabeth, and, if you come to the tree and she doesn't, I shan't
envy you, that's all. You are smart enough to think up some way to help
Elizabeth out."

"I d'know how!" grumbled Sadie. "I think you're real mean, Olga
Priest--always saying things to spoil my fun, so there!" and she whirled
around and went back to the other girls.

"All the same," said Olga to herself, "I've set her to thinking."

The next afternoon Sadie burst tumultuously into Olga's room crying out,
"I've thought what Elizabeth can do! She can make some cakes--she made
some for us last Christmas--awful nice ones, with nuts an' citron an'
raisins in 'em. She can put white icing over 'em an' little blobs of red
sugar for holly berries, you know, with citron leaves. I thought that up
myself, about the icing. Won't they be dandy?"

"Fine! Good for you, Sadie!"

Sadie accepted the approval as her due, and went on breathlessly, "I
thought it all out in school to-day. An' say, Olga--I can make baskets
of green and white crepe paper to hold three or four of the cakes, an'
stick a bit of holly in each basket. Then they can be from me an'
'Lizabeth both--how's that?"

"Couldn't be better," Olga declared.

"Uh huh, you see little Sadie h