package
Is waiting for you there."

"Now where would you look if that cah'd were for you?" she demanded.

"In the conservatory?" he replied, inquiringly.

"That is what Miss Allison will do, probably," answered Lloyd, her
cheeks dimpling at the thought. "But aftah awhile she will remembah the
old dragon that mothah always keeps full of rose-leaves just as
Grandmothah Amanthis did. See?"

She lifted the lid of a rare old cloisonne rose-jar that had stood on
the end of the mantel for a longer time than Lloyd's memory could reach,
and took out a small box. Taking off the cover, she disclosed what
appeared to be a ripe cherry with a bee clinging to its side.

"Take the bee in yoah thumb and fingah and pull," she ordered. "See?
It's a cunning little tape-measuah for her work-basket."

A sound of sleigh-bells jingling rapidly toward the house made her clap
the lid on the box and drop it hastily back into the rose-jar.

"There they come!" she cried, "and the candles haven't been lighted.
Hurry, grandfathah! We can't wait to call Walkah! Throw open the front
doah!"

Flying to the hall closet for the long taper kept for the purpose, she
held it an instant toward the blazing logs, and then darting around the
room, passed from one candelabrum to another, till every waxen candle
was tipped with its star of light. In her scarlet dress and the holly
berries, her cheeks glowing and the taper held above her head as she
tiptoed to reach the highest one, she looked like some radiant acolyte
of Joy.

Betty, rushing breathlessly down-stairs at the sound of the
sleigh-bells, paused an instant between the portieres at sight of her.
"Oh, Lloyd!" she cried, clasping her hands. "You've given me the
loveliest idea! I've only got it by the tail feathers now, but I'll find
words for it all some day." Then, without waiting to explain, she ran
out to the porch, where, between the tall pillars, the old Colonel
waited with elaborate courtesy to receive the coming guests.

As the sleighs glided nearer, Betty looked back through the door swung
hospitably open to its widest, and saw Lloyd hastily thrusting the taper
back into the closet.

"She lighted it at the Christmas fire," thought Betty, struggling with
the tail feathers of her lovely idea, in an effort to grasp all that
Lloyd's act suggested. "And red is the emblem of joy. It might go this
way: 'She touched the Christmas tapers with the Yule log's heart of
flame.' No, it ou