n she got a long box and put something in
it and wrapped it and addressed it to Kingdon Knox.

And after that she went to the window and stood there, watching until
she saw Tommy coming.

And the next morning when Kingdon Knox found the long box on his desk,
addressed in Mary's handwriting, he thought it was a Christmas present,
and he opened it, smiling.

But his smile died as he read the note which lay on top of a string of
jade beads:

"I am sending them back, Mr. Knox, with my resignation. I should
never have taken them. But somehow you made me feel that I was a
sort of fairy princess, and that jade beads belonged to me, and
everything beautiful, and that some day life would bring them. But
life isn't that, and you knew it and I didn't. Life is just warm
human happiness, and a home, and work for those we love. And so,
after all, I am going to marry Tommy. And Nannie is going to marry
Dick. In a way it is a happy ending, and in a way it isn't, because
I've grown away from the kind of life I must live with Tommy, and I
am afraid that in some ways I am not fitted for it. But Tommy says
that I am silly to be afraid. And in the future I am going to trust
Tommy."

And so Mary went out of Kingdon Knox's life. And on Christmas Day at the
head of a great table, with servants to the right of him and servants to
the left, he carved a mammoth turkey; and there was silver shining, and
glass sparkling and lovely women smiling, all in honor of the merry
season.

But Kingdon Knox was not merry as he thought of the jade beads and of
Mary's empty desk.

BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK

I

With the Merryman girls economy was a fine art. Money was spent by them
to preserve the family traditions. Nothing else counted. Everything was
sacrificed to the gods of yesterday.

Little Anne Merryman had shivered all her short life in the bleakness
of this domestic ideal.

"Why can't I have butter on my bread?" she had demanded in her
long-legged schoolgirl days, when she had worn her fair hair in a fat
braid down her back.

The answers had never been satisfying. Well-bred people might, Amy
indicated, go without butter. Their income was not elastic, and there
were things more important.

"What things? Amy, I'm so hungry I could eat a house."

It was these expressions of Anne's about food which shocked Amy and
Ethel.

"I'd sell my soul for a slice of roast beef."

"