"Oh, thank you, thank you, Stepmother!" cried Constance jumping up and clapping her hands with greater delight than if she had herself received a Christmas gift. "I'll never betray you, never! None shall know that any but my wicked, light-minded self had a hand in this profanation of----. What does it profane, Stepmother?" "Plymouth and Plymouth pilgrimage," said Dame Eliza, and this time the smile that she had checked before had its way. Constance ran upstairs to look for the pieces which were to be transformed by fairy magic, through her means, from shapeless rags to a fair and rosy daughter for pale Damaris. She remembered, wondering, as she knelt before her chest, that she had clapped her hands and pranced, and that Dame Eliza had not reproved her. Constance was busy with her doll till Christmas morning, the more so that she must hide it from Damaris and there was not warmth anywhere to sit and sew except in the great living room where Damaris amused Oceanus most of the darksome days. But Damaris's mother connived with Constance to divert the child, and there were long evenings, for, to give Constance more time, Dame Eliza put Damaris early to bed, and Constance sat late at her sewing. Thus when Christmas day came there sat on the hearth, propped up against the back of Stephen Hopkins's big volume of Shakespeare, a doll with a painted face that had real claim to prettiness. She wore a gown of sprigged muslin that hung so full around the pointed stomacher of her waist that it was a scandal to sober Plymouth, and a dangerous example to Damaris, had she been inclined to vain light-mindedness. And--though this was a surprise also to Dame Eliza--there was a horse of brown woollen stuff, with a tail of fine-cut rags and a mane of ravelled rags, and legs which, though considerably curved as to shape and unreliable as to action, were undeniably legs, and four in number. There were bright, black buttons on the steed's head suggestive of eyes, and the red paint in two spots below them were all the fiery nostrils the animal required. This was Giles's contribution to the joy of his ailing baby brother. Oceanus was a frail child whose grasp on life had been taken at a time too severe for him to hold it long, nor indeed did he. "Come out and wander down the street, Con," Giles whispered to Constance under the cover of the shouts of the two children who had come downstairs to find the marvellous treasures, the doll and horse, awaiting them, and who went half mad with joy, just like modern children in old Plymouth, as if they had not been little pilgrims. "There will be amusement for thee; come out, but never say I bade you come. You can make an errand." "Oh, Giles, you are not plotting mischief?" Constance implored, seeing the fun in her brother's eyes and fearing an attempt at Christmas fooling. "No harm afoot, but we hope a little laughter," said Giles, nodding mysteriously as he left the house.