Here were household necessities of every sort from paring-knives, metal dishcloths, and packages of tacks to needles, thimbles, and spools of thread; articles of clothing--overalls, elastic suspenders, underwear for children, hairpins, dozens of pairs of stockings, collars of celluloid and linen, hair ribbons of entrancing colors, shoe laces, safety pins and pins that were not safe, tape measures, soap, scissors, tooth powder--all the hundred-and-one indispensable things for which families in the outlying districts of New England in those pre-Ford days of the nineties were often at a loss. Here were toys,--rubber dolls, rattles, spinning tops, blocks, bouncing balls, and jumping-ropes with shining, many-colored handles of wood,--toys for the birthdays of some Maine farmer’s children whose father could not get easily to town. And here, too, in a far recess of the smallest inside bundle, just as in the last and most precious box of an Arabian Night’s treasure chest, were certain intriguing parcels wrapped in fantastic, figured papers of blue and green and gold--parcels that sent out into the Wescott library, as on the wings of some invisible bird, a rich, spicy fragrance that made one suddenly oblivious of the stockings and the safety pins. It was from these fascinating packages that Mary Christmas selected her gifts--that is, for all but Roger, whose longing eyes had never left a certain red-handled jumping-rope even when that strange, heavy fragrance had floated through the room. To Mary Wescott she gave a sewing-case in glossy black wood, inlaid with tiny flowers and birds of mother-of-pearl in delightful confusion. A tiny golden key, which held all the magic of golden keys everywhere, unlocked it with an unmistakable click, and the lifted cover revealed compartments with all manner of colored silks and threads, a pair of shining scissors, and a silver thimble. There must have been magic, indeed, in that golden key, as anyone would have suspected, for as Mary Wescott looked at the inside and tried on the thimble, she wondered how darning her stockings could ever have seemed a task. For Cynthia there was the most entrancing napkin ring, of that loveliest shade of blue which makes one think of far-away hills in a September haze and of tall spikes of larkspur in the gathering dusk; and it, too, bore flowers whose inlaid petals and tiny, sparkling leaves formed a wreath around the ring. Could she ever again, she wondered as she fingered it, think folding her napkin irksome or needless?