beat! She
just hates it. She'd like to teach school!"

Doris was very glad to hear that someone else had been slow.

Betty had been out to tea occasionally, and Doris tried to make believe
it was so now. They would have missed her more but Martha was a great
talker. There were seven children at the Grants', and one son married.
They had a big farm and a good deal of stock. Martha's lover had bought
a farm also, with a small old house of two rooms. _He_ had to build a
new barn, so they would wait for their house. She had a nice cow she had
raised, a flock of twelve geese, and her father had promised her the old
mare and another cow. She wanted to be married by planting time. She had
a nice feather bed and two pairs of pillows and five quilts, beside two
wool blankets.

Mrs. Leverett was a good deal interested in all this. It took her back
to her own early life. City girls _did_ come to have different ideas.
There was something refreshing in this very homeliness.

Martha knit and sewed as fast as she talked. Mrs. Leverett said "she
didn't let the grass grow under her feet," and Doris wondered if she
would tread it out in the summer. Of course, it couldn't grow in the
winter.

"Aunt Elizabeth," she said presently, in a sad little voice, "am I to
sleep all alone?"

"Oh dear, no. You would freeze to an icicle. Martha will take Betty's
place."

They wrapped up a piece of brick heated pretty well when Doris went to
bed. For it was desperately cold. But the soft feathers came up all
around one, and in a little while she was as warm as toast. She did not
even wake when Martha came to bed. Sometimes Betty cuddled the dear
little human ball, and only half awake Doris would return the hug and
find a place to kiss, whether it was cheek or chin.

"Aunt Elizabeth," when she came in from school one day, "do you know
that Christmas will be here soon--next Tuesday?"

"Well, yes," deliberately, "it is supposed to be Christmas."

"But it really is," with child-like eagerness. "The day on which Christ
was born."

"The day that is kept in commemoration of the birth of Christ. But some
people try to remember every day that Christ cams to redeem the world.
So that one day is not any better than another."

Doris looked puzzled. "At home we always kept it," she said slowly.
"Miss Arabella made a Christmas cake and ever so many little ones. The
boys came around to sing Noel, and they were given a cake and a penny,
and we went to