? I'd love to
see you an opera singer!"

"Elise, you're crazy to-night! Suppose I should go on the stage, what
would become of all these devoted swains who are worshipping my
feetsteps?"

"Bother the swains! Patty, my heart is set upon it. You must be an
actress. I mean a really nice, gentle, refined one, like Maude Adams, or
Eleanor Robson. Oh, they are so sweet! and such noble, grand women."

"Elise, you have lovely ambitions for your friends. What about yourself?
Won't you be a circus-rider, dear? I want you to be as ambitious for you
as you are for me."

"Patty, stop your fooling. I was quite in earnest."

"Then you'd better begin fooling. It's more sensible than your
earnestness. Now, I'm going to run away to bed and leave you to dream
that you're a circus-rider, whizzing round a ring on a snow-white Arab
steed. Good-night, girlie."

Alone in her room, Patty smiled to herself at Elise's foolishness. And
yet, though she had no desire to be an actress, Patty had sometimes
dreamed of herself as a concert singer, enchanting her audiences with her
clear, sweet voice, which was fine and true, if not great. She was
ambitious, though as yet not definitely so, and Elise's words had roused
a dormant desire to be or to do something worth while, and not, as she
thought to herself, be a mere social butterfly.

Then she smiled again as she thought of Elise's talk about Ken and Roger.

But here no answering chord was touched. As chums, she thoroughly liked
both boys, but the thought of any more serious liking only roused a
feeling of amusement in her mind.

"Perhaps I may be glad to have somebody in love with me some day," she
thought; "but it will be many years from now, and meantime I want to do a
whole lot of things that are really worth doing."

Then, with a whimsical thought that to sleep was the thing most worth
doing at the present moment, Patty tumbled into the soft, white nest
prepared for her and was soon sound asleep.

Christmas Day was one of the finest. No snow, but a clear, cold, bracing
air, that was exhilarating to breathe.

"Skating this afternoon?" said Roger, after the Merry Christmas greetings
had been exchanged.

"Yes, indeed," cried Patty and Elise in one breath.

"Let's get up a party, shall us?" went on Roger, "and skate till dusk,
and then all come back here and have tea under the Christmas tree?"

"Lovely!" cried Elise, but Patty hesitated.

"You know we have the dance on for to-night