olding their very breath in their
efforts to be still, the stairs creeking at every step. Did you ever
_particularly_ want stairs to keep still, that they didn't creak like
thunder-claps?

The girls managed to get into the wood-shed, fill their basket, and
steal back into the kitchen without mishap. Then came the somewhat
dubious undertaking of crawling upstairs in darkness that might be felt,
with a heavy and decidedly uncertain load of wood.

"I'll go first and carry the basket," said Gypsy. "One can do it easier
than two."

So she began to feel her way slowly up.

"It's black as Egypt! Joy, why don't you come?"

"I'm caught on something--oh!" Down fell something with an awful crash
that echoed and reechoed, and resounded through the sleeping house. It
was succeeded by an utter silence.

"What is it?" breathed Gypsy, faintly.

"The clothes-horse, and _every one of Patty's clean clothes_!"

Scarcely were the words off from Joy's lips, when Gypsy, sitting down on
the stairs to laugh, tipped over her basket, and every solitary stick of
that wood clattered down the uncarpeted stairs, thumped through the
banisters, bounced on the floor, rolled into the corners, thundered
against the cellar door. I don't believe you ever heard such a noise in
all your life.

Mr. and Mrs. Breynton ran from one direction, Tom from another, Winnie
from a third, and Patty, screaming, in fearful _dishabille_, from the
attic, and the congress that assembled in that entry where sat Gypsy
speechless on one stair, and Joy on another, the power fails me to
describe.

But this was the end of that Christmas night.

It should be recorded that the five-dollar bill and the portfolio with
purple roses on it were both forthcoming that day, and that Gypsy
entirely forgot any difference between her own little gifts and Joy's.
This was partly because she had somehow learned to be glad in the
difference, if it pleased Joy; partly because of a certain look in her
mother's eyes when she saw the picture-frame. Such a look made Gypsy
happy for days together.

That Christmas was as merry as Christmas can be, but the best part of it
all was the sight of Peace Maythorne's face as she lay twining the
gorgeous worsteds over her thin fingers, the happy sunlight touching
their colors of crimson, and royal purple, and orange, and woodland
brown, just as kindly as it was touching the new Christmas jewels over
which many another young girl in many another hom