“Here is half of your Christmas spending money,” she said, straightening Beth’s hair ribbon by way of a caress. “Your uncle left me the hundred for you, but I brought you only half; you will have to shop more than once.” “Half!” cried Beth, turning pale at the thought of being responsible for such a sum. “Fifty dollars? Oh, Aunt Alida, you’d better let me leave almost all of that here! Aunt Rebecca carries large sums like that in the waist of her dress when she goes to Boston to shop--she doesn’t often go! But I’d not have any place to carry it safely, because I button up in the back and I’d never be able to get it out.” At this speech Natalie and Alys collapsed and Aunt Alida fairly shook Beth in a funny ecstasy of enjoyment of her. “Uncle Jim was quite right: you are an Anomaly and a Survival, you little animate New England primer!” she cried. “Keep your purse hand in your muff till you are ready to use the money, and touch your selections with one hand only! Meet me down-stairs in half an hour, lassies.” Aunt Alida hurried away with this injunction and Beth seized the opportunity to consult her cousins in regard to a gift for her, just as she had consulted Aunt Alida for them. “Oh, no one ever knows what to get for mama,” cried Alys. “Lots of her friends ask us, but we never know. We three are going to have our pictures taken for her and, if we can, we are going to get father to sit, too. That would really please her, for there is no picture of him, except dreadful snapshot things, since we were babies. You have your picture taken with ours and we’ll get them framed prettily. You have yours alone, and then in a group with Dirk and us, and help us coax father to sit, and that will be the best thing you could give mama.” “Isn’t that a little--sort of conceited? In me, I mean. Not you, because of course she’d love a picture of her own children. But wouldn’t it be queer in me to think she’d rather have my picture than--well, anything else?” asked Beth. “Now, Bethie, don’t pretend you don’t know that mama loves you!” cried Natalie. “Yes, better than our other cousins, her own nieces and nephews. She’d love a nice picture of you. There’s a splendid place on the avenue where we’re going; real portrait pictures they take,” Alys chimed in. “Oh, and why not send one to all your old friends in Massachusetts--send it instead of a Christmas card, to tell them where your present comes from! And two or three different ones to your friend Janie.” “Alys has an idea, Beth!” added Natalie, refraining from suggesting what a hole this would make in Beth’s Christmas allowance and privately resolving to get her father to pay so much toward these pictures that Beth should never know what their actual cost had been. “Well,” Beth submitted to their wisdom. “And for Uncle Jim? Is there anything on earth he wants? I thought I’d like to make him and your mother something.”