"Clothes!" echoed her husband. "Clothes!" shrieked Betty in a shrill treble. "Cl-othes!" repeated the boys curiously. Only Jill's face lit up with comprehension, mingled with a spice of resentment. "I know--I know! _Old_ clothes, she means! She has been selling old clothes--our old clothes, if you please--to `All a-growing all a- blowing' in exchange for the palm! He likes them better than money. I heard him say so one day when Pam was seeing me off at the door. That's where dad's old coat has gone to, that's where your blouse is, Betty, not to mention some of the boys' ties, and gloves, and my umbrella. Oh, you wretched child! The hours I've spent searching for it! That's where everything has gone that we have been searching for for the last month. She has been gathering them together for the palm!" Mrs Trevor's face was a study of complex emotion as she looked at her baby, but Pam's triumphant satisfaction did not waver for a moment. She nodded her head, and cried cheerfully-- "Oh, lots more things than that! He wanted so much, because palms is most expensive of all before Christmas, and I bought it when you were all out, and cook hid it, and we sprayed its leaves to make them bright. In her last place Miss Bella did them every week with milk-and-water to make them shine!" She had not the least idea that there was anything to be ashamed of in her action; on the contrary, she was full of pride in her own cleverness. But it was impossible to allow such an occasion to pass, even on Christmas evening, when discipline is necessarily relaxed. Mrs Trevor's face was an eloquent mingling of tenderness and distress as she said-- "But did it never strike you, Pam dear, that these things were not your own to sell? That you had no right to sell them?" "They were no use. You said to father, `That coat is too disgraceful to be worn,' and Betty said the blouse mortified her pride, and Jill made fun of her umbrella because it was three and eleven-pence, and the wires bulged out. She said, `I can't think why it is that I always lose silk ones, and I can't get rid of this wretched thing, do what I will!' I thought,"--Pam's voice sounded a tremulous note of disappointment--"I thought you would all be pleased with me for clearing them away." "It would have been different, dear, if you had asked our permission, though we all have to put up with shabby things sometimes. As it was, it was both wrong and dishonest to take things which belonged to other people, and sell them without permission." "But I sold my own too! My blue coat and hat, because you said yourself they didn't suit me, and you couldn't bear to see them on. I heard you speaking to Betty, and saying those very words. I thought you'd be pleased if you never did see them again!" Mrs Trevor gasped in consternation.