The opening years of the new century found Mary and Cynthia within the white-columned academy and in daily verbal conflict with Orgetorix, chief of the Helvetians, Catiline, and the Ten Thousand Greeks with their interminable parasangs; Roger mightily concerned with “Thanatopsis” and cube root; and John under the initial spell of the burial of De Soto in the dark Mississippi. They found Mrs. Wescott still true to sulphur and molasses, blue serge, and a nine o’clock bedtime, and Mr. Wescott still a victim during the summer months of that distressing habit already fully described, and an all-the-year supporter of the party which had brought forth a Lincoln and inspired a McKinley--the party whose bedrock principles of conservatism and integrity must safely weather its present rather drastic and impulsive leadership. And they found Mary Christmas still a traveler of the coast roads from the drifting of apple blossoms in early June to the falling of the leaves in late October. Nor had those years wrought many changes in Mary Christmas. Except for some white threads in her dark hair and the deepening of certain lines about her nose and mouth, she was outwardly as she had been on that memorable first visit. She still wore the gold coins in her ears and the red silk handkerchief, shifted her black bundle from one hip to the other with surprising agility, and persisted in falling upon her face at the initial approach of Mr. Wescott. She was still an inexhaustible treasure-house of stories, each year adding others to those first and best beloved, of the ark and Ararat, of the ancient saints and the pilgrim, and of that holy city, Etchmiadzin. Her eyes under their dark brows had not lost their restlessness. Now they burned with anguish over the sufferings of her land, now glowed with the sad loveliness of the tales which she told, now gleamed with ominous revenge at the hated name of Turk, which, although the children were forbidden to use it in her presence, occasionally found its way to her ears. Falling petals and the drying of the country roads still were heralds of her coming; indeed, those early days in June when orchard blossoms drifted through the bright air had come to be known in the Wescott family and among the other children of the village as Mary Christmas days.