Already Mis' Winslow was walking back to the house; the other two women overtook her; and from the porch they heard the children begin to sing:-- "_Go bury Saint Nicklis...._" The rest was lost in the closing of the door. Back in the sitting room the women stood looking at one another. Mis' Bates was frowning and all Mis' Moran's expressions were on the verge of dissolving; but in Mis' Winslow's face it was as though she had found some new way of consciousness. "Ladies," Mis' Winslow said, "them children are out there pretending to bury Santa Claus--and so are we. And I bet we can't any of us do it." In the room, there was a moment of silence in which familiar things seemed to join with their way of saying, "We've been keeping still all the while!" Then Mis' Winslow pushed her hair, regardless of its parting, straight back from her forehead,--a gesture with which she characterized any moment of stress. "Ladies," she said, "I don't want we should go back on our paper, either. But mebbe there's more to Christmas than it knows about--or than we know about. Mebbe we can do something that won't interfere with the paper we've all signed, and yet that'll be something that is something. Mebbe they's things to use that ain't never been used yet.... Oh, I donno. Nor I guess you donno. But let's us find out!" IX Christmas Week came. Cities by thousands made preparation. Great shops took on vast cargoes of silk and precious things and seemed ready to sail about, distributing gifts to the town, and thought better of it, and let folk come in numbers to them to pay toll for what they took. Banks opened their doors and poured out, now a little trickling stream of pay envelopes, now a torrent of green and gold. Flower stalls drew tribute from a million pots of earth where miracles had been done. Pastry counters, those mock commissariats, delicately masking as servants to necessity, made ready their pretty pretences to nutrition. The woods came moving in--acres of living green, taken in their sleep, their roots left faithful to a tryst with the sap, their tops summoned to bear an hybrid fruitage. From cathedrals rose the voices of children now singing little carols and hymns in praise of the Christ-child, now speaking little verses in praise of the saint, Nicholas, now clamouring for little new possessions. And afar from the fields that lay empty about the clustered roofs of towns came a chorus of voices of the live things, beast and fowl, being offered up in the gorgeous pagan rites of the day.