"Guy, I believe you're right. I'll be sorry to desert my own kids, of course, but I rather think they can stand it for once. If the others fall into line, you may count on me." Guy got away, feeling that the worst of his troubles was over. In his younger sister, Nan, he hoped to find an ardent ally and he was not disappointed. Carolyn--Mrs. Charles Wetmore--also fell in heartily with the plan. Ralph, from somewhere in the far West, wrote that he would get home or break a leg. Edson thought the idea rather a foolish one, but was persuaded by Jessica, his wife--whom Guy privately declared a trump--that he must go by all means. And so they all fell into line, and there remained for Guy only the working out of the details. * * * * * "Mis' Fernald"--Marietta Cooley strove with all the decision of which she was capable to keep her high-pitched, middle-aged voice in order--"'fore you get to bed I'm most forgettin' what I was to ask you. I s'pose you'll laugh, but Guy--he wrote me partic'lar he wanted you and his father to"--Marietta's rather stern, thin face took on a curious expression--"to hang up your stockin's." Mrs. Fernald paused in the door-way of the bedroom opening from the sitting-room downstairs. She looked back at Marietta with her gentle smile. "Guy wrote that?" she asked. "Then--it almost looks as if he might be coming himself, doesn't it, Marietta?" "Well, I don't know's I'd really expect him," Marietta replied, turning her face away and busying herself about the hearth. "I guess what he meant was more in the way of a surprise for a Christmas present--something that'll go into a stockin', maybe." "It's rather odd he should have written you to ask me," mused Mrs. Fernald, as she looked out the stockings. Marietta considered rapidly. "Well, I s'pose he intended for me to get 'em on the sly without mentionin' it to you, an' put in what he sent, but I sort of guessed you might like to fall in with his idee by hangin' 'em up yourself, here by the chimbley, where the children all used to do it. Here's the nails, same as they always was." Mrs. Fernald found the stockings, and touched her husband on the shoulder, as he sat unlacing his shoes. "Father, Guy wrote he wanted us to hang up our stockings," she said, raising her voice a little and speaking very distinctly. The elderly man beside her looked up, smiling. "Well, well," he said, "anything to please the boy. It doesn't seem more than a year since he was a little fellow hanging up his own stocking, does it, mother?" The stockings were hung in silence. They looked thin and lonely as they dangled beside the dying fire. Marietta hastened to make them less lonely. "Well," she said, in a shame-faced way, "the silly boy said I was to hang mine, too. Goodness knows what he'll find to put into it that'll fit, 'less it's a poker."