he village, and
the novelty of not always having a teacher at one's heels, proved in
itself diverting.

Patty found the two companions which circumstances had forced upon her
unexpectedly companionable. They skated and coasted and had snow fights;
and Harriet, to Patty's wide-eyed astonishment, assumed a very
appreciable animation. On Christmas Eve they had been out with Martin
delivering Christmas baskets to old time proteges of the school; and on
the way home, through pure overflowing animal spirits, for a mile or
more they had "caught on" the back of the bob, and then tumbled out and
run and caught on again, until they finally dove head foremost into the
big piled-up drift by the porte-cochere. They shook the snow from their
clothes, like puppies from a pond, and laughing and excited trooped
indoors. Harriet's cheeks were red from contact with the snow, her
usually prim hair was a tangled mass about her face, her big dark eyes
had lost their mournful look. They were merry, mischievous, girlish
eyes. She was not merely pretty, but beautiful, in a wild, unusual
gypsyish way that compelled attention.

"I say," Patty whispered to Kid McCoy as they divested themselves of
rubbers and leggins in the lower hall. "Look at Harriet! Isn't she
pretty?"

"Golly!" murmured the Kid. "If she knew enough to play up to her looks,
she'd be the ravingest beauty in all the school."

"Let's make her!" said Patty.

At the top of the stairs they met Osaki with a hammer and chisel.

"I open two box," he observed. "One Mees Margarite McCoy. One Mees Patty
Wyatt."

"Hooray!" cried the Kid, starting at a gallop for her room in the South
Wing.

A Christmas box to Kid McCoy meant a lavish wealth of new possessions
out of all proportion to her desserts. She owned a bachelor guardian who
was subject to fits of such erratic generosity that the Dowager had
regularly to remind him that Margarite was but a school girl with simple
tastes. Fortunately he always forgot this warning before the next
Christmas--or else he knew Kid too well to believe it--and the boxes
continued to come.

Patty had also started without ceremony for Paradise Alley, when she
became aware of deserted Harriet, slowly trailing down the dim length
of Lark Lane. She ran back and grasped her by an elbow.

"Come on, Harry! And help me open my box."

Harriet's face flushed with sudden pleasure; it was the first time, in
the five and a half years of her school career, tha