out of a shop, wouldn't be the same thing at all.
It wouldn't MEAN anything. I consider it a great compliment that he has
given me this book. I'm prouder of it than of anything else I've got."

"Well, you're welcome to it," said Felicity. "I don't understand and I
don't want to. I wouldn't give anybody a Christmas present that wasn't
new, and I wouldn't thank anybody who gave me one."

Peter was in the seventh heaven because Felicity had given him a
present--and, moreover, one that she had made herself. It was a bookmark
of perforated cardboard, with a gorgeous red and yellow worsted goblet
worked on it, and below, in green letters, the solemn warning, "Touch
Not The Cup." As Peter was not addicted to habits of intemperance, not
even to looking on dandelion wine when it was pale yellow, we did not
exactly see why Felicity should have selected such a device. But Peter
was perfectly satisfied, so nobody cast any blight on his happiness by
carping criticism. Later on Felicity told me she had worked the bookmark
for him because his father used to drink before he ran away.

"I thought Peter ought to be warned in time," she said.

Even Pat had a ribbon of blue, which he clawed off and lost half an hour
after it was tied on him. Pat did not care for vain adornments of the
body.

We had a glorious Christmas dinner, fit for the halls of Lucullus, and
ate far more than was good for us, none daring to make us afraid on that
one day of the year. And in the evening--oh, rapture and delight!--we
went to Kitty Marr's party.

It was a fine December evening; the sharp air of morning had mellowed
until it was as mild as autumn. There had been no snow, and the long
fields, sloping down from the homestead, were brown and mellow. A weird,
dreamy stillness had fallen on the purple earth, the dark fir woods, the
valley rims, the sere meadows. Nature seemed to have folded satisfied
hands to rest, knowing that her long wintry slumber was coming upon her.

At first, when the invitations to the party had come, Aunt Janet had
said we could not go; but Uncle Alec interceded in our favour, perhaps
influenced thereto by Cecily's wistful eyes. If Uncle Alec had a
favourite among his children it was Cecily, and he had grown even more
indulgent towards her of late. Now and then I saw him looking at her
intently, and, following his eyes and thought, I had, somehow, seen that
Cecily was paler and thinner than she had been in the summer, and that
h