"I ain't no money to spend, you know," she said, "an' I won't let anybody else spend any for me, for this. Folks has plans enough o' their own without mine. But I kep' sayin' to myself, all the way home when my knees give down at the i-dee of what I was goin' to do: 'Calliope, the Lord says, "_Give._" An' He meant you to give, same's those that hev got. He didn't say, "Everybody give but Calliope, an' she ain't got much, so she'd ought to be let off." He said, "_Give._"' An' He didn't mention all nice things, same's I'd like to give, an' most everybody does give--" she nodded toward my bed, brave with its Christmas array. "He didn't mention givin' _things_ at all. An' so," said Calliope, "I thought o' somethin' else." She sat with brooding eyes on the fire, her hands clasped about her knees. "The Lord Christ," said Calliope, "didn't hev nothin' of His own. An' yet He just give an' give an' give. An' somehow I got the _i_-dee," she finished, glancing up at me shyly, "that mebbe Christmas ain't really all in your stocking foot, after all. I ain't much to spend, and mebbe that sounds some like sour grapes. But it seems like a good many beautiful things is free to all, an' that they's ways to do. Well, I've thought of a way--" "Calliope," I said, "tell me what you have really planned for the old-lady party. You _have_ planned?" "Well, yes," she said, "I hev. But mebbe you'll think it ain't anything. First I thought o' tea, an' thin bread-an'-butter sandwiches--it seems some like a party when you get your bread thin. An' I've got apples in the house we could roast, an' corn to pop over the kitchen fire. But then I come to a stop. For I ain't nothin' else, an' I've spent every cent I _can_ spend a'ready. But yet I did want to show 'em somethin' lovely--an' differ'nt from what they see, so's it'd seem as if somebody cared, an' as if they'd been _in Christmas_, too. An' all of a sudden it come to me, why not invite in a few little children o' somebody's here in Friendship? So's them old grandma ladies--" She shook her head and turned away. "I expec'," she said, "you think I'm terrible foolish. But wouldn't that be givin', don't you think? _Would_ that be anything?" I have planned, as will fall to us all, many happy ways of keeping festival; but I think that never, even in days when I myself was happiest, have I so delighted in any event as in this of Calliope's proposing. And when at last she had gone, and the dusk had fallen and I lighted candles and went back to my pleasant task, some way the stitches of pink and blue on flowered fabrics, the flutter of crisp ribbons, and the breath of the sachets were not greatly in my thoughts; and that which made me glad was a certain shining in the room, but this was not of candle-light, or firelight, or winter starlight.