bly
repay you for the good you have done me this autumn. But I am going to
try, nevertheless, by making you a Christmas present before Christmas
arrives. Now, when I was your age, I preferred clothes to other things.
I think all young girls do; or, if they don't they are most unnatural.
Therefore, child, I have decided to pay off some of my indebtedness to
you by getting my dressmaker to make you some dresses, if it is
agreeable to you. Why, what is this! My little girl crying?"

The tears were streaming down Anne's cheeks.

"You mustn't cry, my own child," sobbed Mrs. Gray. "For I always cry
when I see other people doing it, and it's very bad for my old eyes, you
know."

"You are so good to me!" said Anne. "It makes me cry because I'm so
happy."

"Well, well!" exclaimed Mrs. Gray, drying her eyes and beginning to
laugh. "What a couple of sillies we are, to be sure. Now go, Anne, to my
dressmaker, Mrs. Harvey, who has orders to make you four dresses, two
for evening and two for afternoon. Mrs. Harvey has good taste and will
help you select them. But perhaps you will like the ones she and I
looked at the other day. One of them I am sure you will admire. I chose
it specially because it will give color to your pale cheeks."

"What is it, Mrs. Gray?" asked Anne eagerly.

"It's pink crepe de Chine, my dear."

And Anne held her breath to keep from crying again.

CHAPTER XII

MIRIAM PLANS A REVENGE

For weeks Miriam Nesbit had felt a sullen resentment toward her brother,
David, because he persisted in being friends with at least two of the
girls in Oakdale High School whom she disliked most.

When he announced, one morning at breakfast, that he had been included
in Mrs. Gray's house party, his sister suddenly burst into tears of
passionate rage.

"Please don't cry, Miriam, old girl," said David, who was not of a
quarrelsome disposition. "I'm awfully sorry if I hurt you, but, you
know, Mrs. Gray was one of my earliest sweethearts."

Which was perfectly true. When David was a little boy he used to crawl
through the garden hedge and call on the charming old lady nearly every
day.

David had hoped that Miriam would laugh at this, but she stormed all the
more, while poor Mrs. Nesbit looked wretched.

"It isn't Mrs. Gray," sobbed Miriam. "But to think that my own brother
would associate with Grace Harlowe, who is always working against me,
and that common little Pierson girl whose sister takes in sewing!"