o do. Well, I've
thought of a way--"

"Calliope," I said, "tell me what you have really planned for the
old-lady party. You _have_ planned?"

"Well, yes," she said, "I hev. But mebbe you'll think it ain't anything.
First I thought o' tea, an' thin bread-an'-butter sandwiches--it seems
some like a party when you get your bread thin. An' I've got apples in
the house we could roast, an' corn to pop over the kitchen fire. But
then I come to a stop. For I ain't nothin' else, an' I've spent every
cent I _can_ spend a'ready. But yet I did want to show 'em somethin'
lovely--an' differ'nt from what they see, so's it'd seem as if somebody
cared, an' as if they'd been _in Christmas_, too. An' all of a sudden it
come to me, why not invite in a few little children o' somebody's here
in Friendship? So's them old grandma ladies--"

She shook her head and turned away.

"I expec'," she said, "you think I'm terrible foolish. But wouldn't that
be givin', don't you think? _Would_ that be anything?"

I have planned, as will fall to us all, many happy ways of keeping
festival; but I think that never, even in days when I myself was
happiest, have I so delighted in any event as in this of Calliope's
proposing. And when at last she had gone, and the dusk had fallen and I
lighted candles and went back to my pleasant task, some way the stitches
of pink and blue on flowered fabrics, the flutter of crisp ribbons, and
the breath of the sachets were not greatly in my thoughts; and that
which made me glad was a certain shining in the room, but this was not
of candle-light, or firelight, or winter starlight.

With the days the plans for the Proudfit party--or rather the plans of
the Proudfit guests--went merrily forward. It was, they said, like "in
the Oldmoxon days," when the house in which I was now living had been
the Friendship fairyland. Some take their parties solemnly, some
joyously, some feverishly; but Friendship takes them vitally, as it
takes a project or the breath of being. Like the rest of the world, the
village sank Christmas in festivity. It could not see Christmas for the
Christmas plans.

Speculation was the delight of meetings, and every one conspired in
terms of toilettes.

"Likely," said Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, "Mis' Banker Mason'll
wear her black-an'-white foulard. Them foulards are wonderful
durable--you can't muss 'em. She got hers when Gramma Mason first hurt
her back, so's if anything happened she'd be part