Whereupon the orchestra played the gayest airs it could and the guests reluctantly filed out of the beautiful room, turning back again and again to look at the tree, shining in its Christmas green, pointing upward. It told the children, if they had been wise enough to understand it, that the spirit of Christmas is from above and that it makes unfading spring time in a frozen world. “Take off your costumes, children. Dinner will soon be served, though I don’t see how we can any of us eat it! I’m deafened and worn out with that riotous celebration--but it was beautiful! Your party was a success, Bethie!” said Mrs. Cortlandt. “_My_ party!” echoed Beth significantly. The children laid aside their costumes, not without regret, and appeared in their proper persons at dinner. Half a dozen of Mr. and Mrs. Cortlandt’s friends remained to dine and Natalie and Alys were allowed to ask a girl apiece. After dinner they went back to the music room. Once more the great tree was illumined; the servants were called in. The Cortlandts distributed presents to their household, while the orchestra, which had been retained, played softly and a sense of peace, of profound peaceful joy, seemed to descend upon them, after the late hubbub. But it was the peace of the memory of that earlier good time and that they had given more than half a hundred children the Merry Christmas that otherwise they could not have known. Beth found herself snowed under with white parcels, tied with the Christmas colors. As gift after gift came into her overflowing little hands, she grew pale with excitement and sat down on the floor with them all in her lap, too burdened with emotion and too many gifts to stand up. Here she opened boxes and saw in a dazed way a little watch, such a ring as she had coveted hopelessly, books, pins, trinkets of all sorts, and at last even the perfect doll which she had said that she would like if she were not too big to play with it. And she knew the moment she saw it that it was so lovely that in some way she should shrink to the proper size to play with it. All the rest were getting presents, the servants, too. Beth felt that no one could describe this sort of Christmas so that a person who had not seen it could realize it. She foresaw herself trying to describe it to Aunt Rebecca and Janie, and failing. When the other packages were opened and examined Beth slyly opened one that had come to her from Aunt Rebecca. It was with doubt she opened it, fearing it might be something that her cousins would find droll. But it was a miniature, a beautiful painted miniature that she had never seen before. Aunt Rebecca had put a card in its case and on the card was written in her fine, old-fashioned hand: “This is your mother’s picture. I hope you will have a pleasant Christmas and be a good girl.”