ion of an inch, just enough to let the embroidered
edge of a petticoat show a trifle. When she saw the look of relief
which flooded her mother's face, Elnora knew that forgiveness was in her
heart, and that she would go home in the morning.

It was late afternoon before she arrived, and a dray followed with a
load of packages. Mrs. Comstock was overwhelmed. She sat half dazed
and made Elnora show her each costly and beautiful or simple and useful
gift, tell her carefully what it was and from where it came. She studied
the faces of Elnora's particular friends. The gifts from them had to be
set in a group. Several times she started to speak and then stopped. At
last, between her dry lips, came a harsh whisper.

"Elnora, what did you give back for these things?"

"I'll show you," said Elnora cheerfully. "I made the same gifts for the
Bird Woman, Aunt Margaret and you if you care for it. But I have to run
upstairs to get it."

When she returned she handed her mother an oblong frame, hand carved,
enclosing Elnora's picture, taken by a schoolmate's camera. She wore
her storm-coat and carried a dripping umbrella. From under it looked
her bright face; her books and lunchbox were on her arm, and across the
bottom of the frame was carved, "Your Country Classmate."

Then she offered another frame.

"I am strong on frames," she said. "They seemed to be the best I could
do without money. I located the maple and the black walnut myself, in a
little corner that had been overlooked between the river and the ditch.
They didn't seem to belong to any one so I just took them. Uncle Wesley
said it was all right, and he cut and hauled them for me. I gave the
mill half of each tree for sawing and curing the remainder. Then I gave
the wood-carver half of that for making my frames. A photographer gave
me a lot of spoiled plates, and I boiled off the emulsion, and took the
specimens I framed from my stuff. The man said the white frames were
worth three and a half, and the black ones five. I exchanged those
little framed pictures for the photographs of the others. For presents,
I gave each one of my crowd one like this, only a different moth. The
Bird Woman gave me the birch bark. She got it up north last summer."

Elnora handed her mother a handsome black-walnut frame a foot and a
half wide by two long. It finished a small, shallow glass-covered box of
birch bark, to the bottom of which clung a big night moth with delicate
pale green wing