When John’s turn came, Mary Christmas stood still for a moment and looked at him, standing sturdily apart from the others in his blue gingham suit, his chubby hands behind him, his wide, inquiring eyes intent upon her face. Then she laughed, like the sound of the spring streams in her own land, and drew out yet another package from the farthest recess of all. Turning her back, she laughed again, softly, as she undid the paper. Then, suddenly facing them, she took two quick steps toward John, and placed over his curly head and around his soft cheeks a silk cap made of the most bewildering colors in orderly rows and topped by the most piquant of gold tassels. What wonder that everyone applauded then, even to the baseball team that had been surreptitiously watching proceedings for a full hour from various stations about the porch and beneath the windows! For John in blue gingham, his cheeks flushed to a bright pink, his brown eyes shining with excitement and pleasure, some tendrils of golden hair escaping from the silken band of his new cap, which might have graced the dark head of some Eastern prince, was quite too rare a sight to be received in silence! Mrs. Wescott was so engrossed in her youngest child that she was quite taken off her guard when her present came. She was trying to stifle a wish, which seemed to her vain and extravagant, namely, that some great painter might make a portrait of John in his new cap, when she became suddenly aware of something enfolding her like a white, fragrant mist. And there she was in Mary Christmas’ present, with her children laughing at the surprise on her face and her husband standing in amazed admiration beside her.