In the back of the carriage, driving over from Greenacres, Mrs. Robbins had placed a big bushel basket, and into this had gone the gifts to be hung on the tree. After dinner, while the Judge and Mr. Robbins smoked before the fire, and Kit led the merry-making out in the sitting room, there were mysterious “goings on” in the big front parlor. Finally Cousin Beth came softly out, and turned down all the lights. Jean slipped over to the organ, and as the tall old doors were opened wide, she played softly, “Gather around the Christmas tree.” Doris picked up the melody and led, sitting on a hassock near the doors, gazing with all her eyes up at the beautiful spreading hemlock, laden with lights and gifts. “For pity’s sake, child, what are you crying about?” exclaimed Cousin Roxy, almost stumbling over a little crumpled figure in a dark corner, and Joe sobbed sleepily: “I—I don’t know.” “Oh, it’s just the heartache and the beauty of it all,” said Helen fervently. “He’s lonely for his own folks.” “’Tain’t neither,” groaned Joe. “It’s too much mince pie.” So under Cousin Roxy’s directions, Billie took him up to his room, and administered “good hot water and sody.” “Too bad, ’cause he missed seeing all the things taken off the tree,” said Cousin Roxy, laying aside Joe’s presents for him, a long warm knit muffler from herself, a fine jack-knife from the Judge with a pocket chain on it, a package of Billie’s boy books that he had outgrown, and ice skates from the Greenacre girls. After much figuring over the balance left from their Christmas money they had clubbed together on the skates for him, knowing he would have more fun and exercise out of them than anything, and he needed something to bring back the sparkle to his eyes and the color to his cheeks. “Put them all up on the bed beside him, and he’ll find them in the morning,” Billie suggested. “If you’ll let him stay, Mrs. Robbins, I’ll bring him over.” “Isn’t it queer,” Doris said, with a sigh of deepest satisfaction, as she watched the others untying their packages. “It isn’t so much what you get yourself Christmas, it’s seeing everybody else get theirs.” And just then a wide, flat parcel landed squarely in her lap, and she gave a surprised gasp. “The fur mitten isn’t there, but you can snuggle your nose on the muff,” Jean told her, and Doris held up just what she had been longing for, a squirrel muff and stole to throw around her neck. “They’re not neighborhood squirrels, are they, Billie?” she whispered anxiously, and Billie assured her they were Russian squirrels, and no families’ trees around Gilead were wearing mourning.