Dirk was a jester, clad in a beautiful motley of white and blue velvet, fitting him like a sheath. His cap was hung with tiny bells, he carried the jester’s wand, his shoes were the slender pointed-toed affairs of the pictures, his round boyish face, red with excitement and fun, looked like a kewpie’s peering through the cap front that encircled his chin. But Alys and Natalie! Alys in a brilliant metallic green, a straight, smooth mediæval sort of gown, like Beth’s, with gold trimming, and a head-dress in the shape of a holly leaf, with gold imitation coins on the points! And Natalie, surpassing them all in beauty, in a similar gown of red velvet, slashed with pink, a cap covered with holly berries, and imitation rubies studding her waist and binding her throat, her dark beauty set off by the gorgeous color that would have extinguished a less handsome girl. “It’s really awful, it’s so splendid!” gasped Beth, while her cousins went into raptures over her white and gold which turned her into a fairylike creature, contrasting beautifully with their higher coloring. “We’re going to have something by and by where we can wear these things with some one to see them besides the poor kiddies,” said Alys decidedly. “You’re beyond words, Beth; we all are. If mama can’t do things right, then no one can! Hurry down; it’s time. I imagine there are a lot of youngsters here already; they probably will come early. It will be a mercy if we don’t have to send them home in ambulances; these costumes ought to finish them!” “Oh, my dears!” cried Aunt Alida meeting her young folk in the hall. “How more than satisfactory you are! Are you pleased with my surprise for you? Do you like the costumes?” “I guess _like_ isn’t the word for it,” said Dirk. “But what’s the matter with you?” “Nothing, I hope,” laughed Mrs. Cortlandt. “I’m Frau Santa Claus.” Aunt Alida wore a white gown with a white cloak swinging from her shoulders, and a white cap, wreathed with mistletoe and holly, with a single great poinsettia on its left side. Holly and mistletoe encircled her waist and fell like the ends of a girdle on her white skirt. The cloak and cap were made of material as thin as would submit to a bath of alum in which they had been dipped. The alum had crystallized on the cloth and the cap and cloak looked as if they were made of snow crust, glittering under the electric lights. “Aunt Alida, you are--I couldn’t say what you were!” Beth managed to say. “Prettiest thing in old New York all the time, but the greatest ever to-night,” said Natalie, pretending to catch one of her mother’s lustrous dark strands of hair under her cap, though it had not gone astray. “Well, if you aren’t the greatest mother on earth to get up all this, and keep it to yourself!” cried Alys, also finding her voice. “Is there a programme, mama?”