“Aunt Alida,” she said earnestly, her eyes moist, shining through the rapturous tears, “all my life long I have thought how perfectly beautiful it would be if I could do something like that! You read about it in books, you know, how rich girls have trees, or something, for poor children. I think I’d be so happy I couldn’t bear it to have a tree like that! Do you think they could sing hymns around the tree? I do love hymns, ’specially Christmas ones. It wouldn’t be my tree; it would be all, every bit yours, but if you called it a little bit mine I’d be so glad! It would be so much like Bethlehem, you see.” “Gee!” exclaimed Dirk too surprised to help it. “Why?” “Oh, I don’t know. All the poor shepherds, and bringing poor children in, and--and ‘suffer little children,’ you know,” stammered Beth, too embarrassed to put her thought into coherent words. Mrs. Cortlandt drew Beth to her and kissed her with great tenderness. “Little Elizabeth, are you going to be one of those who love, like your namesake, the ‘sweet Saint,’ Elizabeth of Hungary? Dear heart, we will have the tree and if you can give my children some of your sense of the approach to Bethlehem it will be more than a merely Merry Christmas, my precious little niece,” she said softly. That afternoon the great tree was ordered. It was a beauty, so big that the dealer who sold it had been fearful that it might not find a purchaser. Suddenly Beth found herself swept into the vortex of rapid, late Christmas preparations on a mammoth scale. Aunt Alida insisted that all possible decisions should be left to Beth. Beth, at her aunt’s suggestion, asked Anna Mary to help her to select the guests. “Do I know any poor children, is it, Miss Beth?” cried Anna Mary. “Do I not? Sure they do be no lack of them in a big city! I have a niece that’s a Sister of Charity and there’ll be no trouble whatever in her puttin’ us on the thrack of as many destitute little ones as we want. I myself know five families this minyute which has thirty-five children between ’em, all between three and fourteen years of age. And that’s a good start for us.” “Thirty-five! Five into thirty-five--that’s seven apiece, Anna Mary! Isn’t that a lot?” cried Beth. “They’re not divided up just evenly, Miss Beth; one family has nine and one has but four. But sure it is a lot, and more than a lot, for there isn’t enough to take care of the quarter of ’em in a way even plain folks would call takin’ care of ’em,” said Anna Mary with feeling. “Aunt Alida said about fifty would be right, but she said not to worry if there were one or two children over. She doesn’t want to leave out any we find, who really ought to come, just to keep to a certain number,” Beth explained.