North of Boston, in the city where William Howe, still a Democrat, is now president of his company, there are Mary Christmas days. When the first one comes in June, Mary Wescott hurries home from a mothers’ meeting or from the League of Women Voters, gives the surprised maid the remainder of the day, and gets dinner herself. Then, while she prepares the baby’s orange juice (for the times simply demand that she renounce sulphur and molasses), she tells the children of Mary Christmas and of all the manifold things that, because of Mary Christmas, happened to her when she was a little girl. William comes home as the light softens to find a rush of children at the gate, apple blossoms on the table, and Mary in a blue gingham apron with some flour on her pink cheek. And that evening in a quiet house they wonder what on earth they can give their children to compensate for no Mary Christmas! In the college town where Cynthia lives there are Mary Christmas days. When one steals over the campus and lures students from their books, Cynthia, too, is lured from Jeremy Taylor and Richard Baxter and other ecclesiastical heroes who, colleges so often decree, shall be studied in the spring. Forgetting them all for a season, Cynthia talks about words--the glory and magic that lie in so many of them: _silent_, _holy_, _high_, _garden_. And as her students listen, perhaps a trifle wonderingly, they see a blue light, the color of harebells in sunshine, creep into her clear gray eyes and linger there. But, although they do not know it, there is one word that she does not name--a word of three letters which years ago unlocked for her the treasure-house of ages.