The three girl cousins were gathered in Natalie’s room doing up Christmas gifts. Rolls of white tissue paper, of crêpe paper figured in glowing poinsettia and holly; yards and yards of Christmas ribbons, white, with holly or poinsettia designs, or plain holly red; tufts of jewelers’ cotton clinging to everything it should not touch and leaving fuzzy white down behind it when it was removed; Christmas seals of varied designs and Red Cross seals; piles of cards; higher piles of holly boxes of all sorts and sizes; labels asking aimlessly that something should not be “opened until Christmas,” all these things covered the room “except the walls and ceiling,” as Beth had said. She had added that it “was nice when we began,” showing that she was getting a little tired of the work, and Alys had retorted that it is “always nice when you begin.” Beth had only a few packages to do up; they lay together, completed, and now she was helping her cousins with what looked like their endless task. “It’s pretty hard to keep up the way you begin in anything,” said Natalie thoughtfully disentangling the end of the last opened piece of poinsettia ribbon from a roll of plain red. “It’s fun getting things around and starting in, but you--one--get--gets so discouraged when things are all around and mixed up!” “I wouldn’t try to use two pronouns in one sentence, Nat; that is what _I_ call mixed up,” laughed Alys. “Better stick to ‘you,’ if you start with it, even if it isn’t so elegant. Well, all I know is my fingers are turning into chop-sticks; they’re getting all stiff and queer tying these little fiddling bows of narrow ribbon! Wouldn’t it be easy if we could order Christmas presents sent right to the people from the stores?” “With price tags on and the shopping slip done up with them, instead of a Christmas card?” suggested Natalie. “No, I don’t mind getting tired doing this, because it adds at least as much again to the presents to have them come done up so fascinatingly. I wouldn’t care for mine if they came in brown paper, so I’m willing to work to make Christmas nice. But I’m ready to own up that it’s the hardest job I ever have in the whole year.” “Mama won’t let us hand it over to any one else to do,” Alys explained to Beth. “She says it isn’t the right idea at all to have the maids do it. I suppose it isn’t.” “No; I can see that,” said Beth. “It wouldn’t be so hard if we hadn’t got everything out at once. It’s so--crazy!” “Have to,” said Alys. “Else you’ll find you used your boxes wrong, or used up all one kind of paper that you simply had to have for something else.”