t on Patty, as she held up a small crystal
ball. "I've long wanted a crystal, and this is a beauty."

"What's it for?" asked Roger, curiously; "it looks like a marble."

"Marble, indeed! Why, Roger, it's a crystal, a Japanese rock crystal."

"Isn't it glass?"

"No, ignorant one! 'Tis not glass, but a curio of rare and occult value.
In it I read the future, the past, and the present."

"Yes, it is a present, I know," said Roger, and in the laugh at this
sally the subject was dropped, but Roger secretly vowed to look up the
subject of crystals and find out why Patty was so pleased with a marble.

"Elise is simply snowed under," said Kenneth, as they heard rapturous
exclamations from the other side of the room, where Elise was examining
her gifts.

"Think of it!" cried Patty; "she had everything a girl could possibly
want yesterday, and now to-day she has a few bushels more!"

It was literally true. Getting free, somehow, of her own impedimenta,
Patty ran over to see Elise's things.

"You look like a fancy bazaar gone to smash," she declared, as she saw
Elise in the midst of her Christmas portion.

"I feel like an International Exhibition," returned Elise. "I've gifts
from all parts of the known world!"

"And unknown!" said Kenneth, picking up various gimcracks of whose name
or use he had no idea.

"But this is what I like best," she went on, smiling at Kenneth, as she
held up the dainty little card-case he had given her. "I shall use this
only when calling on my dearest friends."

"Good for you!" he returned. "Glad you like it. And as I know you've lots
of dearest friends, I'll promise, when it's worn out, to give you
another."

Elise looked a trifle disappointed at this offhand response to her more
earnest speech, but she only smiled gaily, and turned the subject.

CHAPTER V

SKATING AND DANCING

"Kenneth thinks an awful lot of you, Patty," said Elise, as, after the
Christmas party was all over, the girls were indulging in a good-night
chat.

"Pooh," said Patty, who, in kimono and bedroom slippers, nestled in a big
easy-chair in front of the wood-fire in Elise's dressing-room. "I've
known Ken for years, and we do think a lot of each other. But you needn't
take that tone, Elise. It's a boy and girl chumminess, and you know it.
Why, Ken doesn't think any more of me than Roger does."

"Oh, Roger! Why, he's perfectly gone on you. He worships the ground you
walk on. Surely, Patty, you've notice