For the next hour there was held a council into which Mrs. Hapgood entered with spirit, restraining the girls' ardor, offering all manner of assistance, and making many a useful suggestion for the success of their frolic, which was to be extended to include something for the little brothers, as well as for Jean. There was no time to be lost, for there was only a week before Christmas, and there was much to be done. At dinner time the girls separated, with many vows of secrecy. Christmas fell on Thursday that year. It had been cloudy all the early part of the week, and on Wednesday morning Jean had opened her eyes in the cold, gray dawn, to see the air filled with whirling snowflakes that went dancing and skurrying this way and that before the noisy wind. Such a tempting morning to pull the blankets over one's shoulders and nestle down for another nap! But there was no such luxury for Jean; she scarcely had time to realize that this was the dawn of the Christmas eve. A careless step on a slippery roof, a cutting wind which had numbed him too much to let him save himself, these had given her father a bad fall so that work was out of the question for a long time to come. Her mother was busy caring for her husband and doing a little sewing at odd moments, so the main charge of the house and of the children had fallen on Jean's strong young shoulders, which were bearing the load with a merry willingness that is so much more helpful than mere patient endurance. And really, if it had not been for Christmas, Jean would not have minded it so much. But it was hard to think of the fun the other girls were having over their mysterious plans; and though she had no time to join them, in fancy she pictured their merry afternoons together, while Alan dodged about them, pretending to pry and peep into the carefully covered work-baskets. Harder still it was to imagine the disappointment of her own young brothers, when Christmas morning should reveal the empty little stockings that Santa Claus had forgotten to fill. "No, Jean," Mrs. Dwight had said sadly; "we can't have any Christmas this year. I'm sorry to disappoint you and the children; but with the uncertainty about father's going to work again, I feel that it would be really wrong for us to use our money for presents, when before winter is over, we may have to borrow some for food or clothes."