arry her through the cold hall," said Grandma Holly. "My land-a-livin'!
seems's if I'd been with her to-night, over again!"

Their way of thanks lay among stumbling words and vague repetitions, but
there was a kind of glory in their grateful faces, and one always
remembers that.

"Merry Prismas, gramma ladies!" Viola cried shrilly at the 'bus door,
and within they laughed like mothers as they answered. And Jimmy Sturgis
cracked his whip, and the sleigh-bells jingled.

Nita Ordway and Viola and I stood for a moment with Calliope at her
gate.

"Come!" we begged her, "now go with us. We are all late together. There
is no reason why you should not go with us to the Christmas party."

But Calliope shook her head.

"I'm ever so much obliged to you," she said, "but oh, I couldn't. I've
hed too rilly a Christmas to come down to a party anywheres."

* * * * *

When Nita and Viola and I reached Proudfit House, the guests were all
assembled, but we knew that Mrs. Proudfit and Miss Clementina would be
the first to forgive us when they understood.

The big colonial home was bright with scarlet-shaded candles and
holly-hung walls; there was mistletoe on the sconces, and in the great
hall there were tuneful strings. On the landing of the stairs stood Mrs.
Proudfit and Miss Clementina, charmingly pretty in their delicate
frocks, and wholly gay and gracious. ("They seem lively like in pictures
where folks don't make a loud sound a-talkin'," said Friendship. "I
s'pose it's somethin' you learn in the City.") And Friendship wore its
loyalty like a mantle. Twelve years had passed, and yet one and another
said under breath and sighed, "If only Miss Linda could 'a' been here,
too."

All Friendship Village was there, save Abel Halsey, who was at the Good
Shepherd's Home Christmas tree in the City, and, perhaps one would say,
Delia More, who had begged to be allowed to help in the kitchen "an' be
there that way." Even Peleg Bemus was in his place in the orchestra,
sitting with closed eyes, playing his flute, and keeping audible time
with his wooden leg,--quite as he did when he played his flute at night,
on Friendship streets. And there was Mis' Postmaster Sykes, in the
tobacco-brown net, with butterflies stitched down the skirt and the Lady
Washington geranium in her hair--and forever near her went little Miss
Liddy Ember with an almost passionate creative pride in the gown of her
hand, so that she wo