bell. "I'll have the girls assemble in the dining room
and they can work at the big table."

Immediately there were shuffling feet in the hall, slow feet on the
stair, a heavy tread in the dining room behind them. Where was the youth
in those young feet? There was something in the dragging gait that made
Jane shiver. Seventeen of them seated themselves about the long table,
all in huge, enveloping pinafores of dull brown stuff, coarse and stiff.
They ranged in age from twenty to twelve but on every face, pretty or
plain, stolid or wistful, sullen or sweet, she read the same look of
crushed and helpless waiting. She spread out her materials and gave her
directions and the girls set soberly to work. Seventeen heads bent in
silence over the table; scissors creaked; upstairs a baby cried
fretfully. There leapt into Jane's mind a memory picture of Nannie Slade
Hunter before the joyfully hailed arrival of the Teddybear,--the tiny,
white, enameled chiffonier with its little bunches of painted flowers
spilling over with offerings--Lilliputian garments as 'fine as a fairy's
first tooth'--the chortling pride of Edward R.--the beaming, nervous
mother and mother-in-law--the endless flowers and books; Nannie herself,
cunningly draped and swathed in Batik crepe, prettier than ever before in
her pretty life--

Jane went quickly out of the room and sat down on the bottom step of the
stairs which seemed to be rushing headlong out of the house of drab
tragedy.

"What is it?" Michael Daragh bent over her.

She lifted a twisting face. "Michael Daragh, I never cry, even at
funerals, but I'm going to cry now!"

"Now that would be the great waste of time surely," he smiled down at
her. "Masefield has the true word for it,--'Energy is agony expelled,'
says he. Let you be making that Merry Christmas sign the while you're
sorrowing."

"There they sit--in those awful, mud-colored pinafores--making paper
joy-bells! I can't _bear_ it! _Magenta_ joy-bells!" The matron started
upstairs and Jane drew aside to let her pass. "What are they going to
have for Christmas, Mrs. Richards?"

"Well, we have a real nice dinner,--not turkey, of course, but a nice
dinner," said the matron, "and every girl gets a pair of stockings and a
handkerchief and a Christmas postcard----"

"With more joy-bells?" Jane wanted hotly to know, "or an angel in a
nightdress and a snow scene?"

Mrs. Richards went firmly up the stairs. "We naturally cannot take much
time