If there had been a goodly number of packages upon the Christmas tree on Christmas eve, there were more than double that number by the evening of Christmas day. Not only had Murray and Peter made an excursion to town, but Mrs. Townsend, mindful of many intended gifts stored away in her trunks, had sent Olive in with the others to get them. When the Christmas dinner was over, Rufus proposed that the clan go out for an hour’s skating on a pond not far away. "We can enjoy that tree a lot better if we have some good brisk exercise beforehand," he asserted. "I don’t skate," said Olive, looking as if she wished she did. "Come along with us just the same," urged Ross, "and we ’ll take turns, not exactly ’sitting out’ with you, but walking up and down the shore. Or--we’ll teach you." Olive declined to be taught, but agreed to accompany the others. Promenading along the bank, fur-wrapped, her dark beauty made brilliant by the frosty air which nipped her cheeks, she was a figure to compel attention. She had never seemed more companionable than now, and both Ross and Rufus enjoyed, with more zest than they had anticipated, the period allotted to them for bearing her company. Murray, observing her with brotherly penetration, found her decidedly improved, and wondered what had happened during the months of her absence to make her so much more appreciative of her family’s society than she had been wont to be. When Peter, in his turn, came to offer himself as partner in her exile from the gaieties going on upon the ice, she greeted him with a smile so radiant that he looked at her in wonder. The old friendship between the two, begun in the earlier days of their acquaintance, and carried on through several years, while they grew from boy and girl to man and woman, had waned and nearly died of neglect on both sides during the past two years. Each had become absorbed in pursuits so different that they had little in common, and Olive, especially, had seemed to outgrow the traits of frankness and friendliness which had made Peter like her in spite of many obvious faults. Before she went away, he had come to think of her as hopelessly spoiled and artificial. But now--had something changed her point of view? "A few years ago." said Olive, as the two paced up and down, exchanging comments on the occurrences of the past months, "I was in a hurry to be grown up. When I look at Jane and Shirley and Nancy, after having been away from them for six months, I realise that their genius for remaining girls is going to be an advantage. What a trio they are! Shouldn’t you say they were all three about sixteen?"