"I thought it looked like you," returned Mrs. Townsend, who was looking very much pleased herself over a handkerchief wrought by Nancy’s clever art. The others were busy over their gifts; it was a pandemonium of exclamations and congratulations, expressions of gratitude and observations of wonder and delight. Shirley, her lap full of parcels, tissue-paper, ribbons, and cards of presentation, talking and exclaiming with the rest, was yet keeping her eye on Santa Claus, as he stripped the tree. She was watching for the moment when he should find that envelope. When it came, she meant to be out of the room and away. Meanwhile Santa Claus dropped a fresh package into her lap. She recognised the saint’s own handwriting on the wrapper--a bolder, firmer hand than one would have expected from a gentleman with so long and snowy a beard. She opened it with strong anticipation, and found within a set of note-books of special style and quality, evidently made to order, for the binding was of a beautiful texture of leather, and the paper within of the best known to trade--the thin India, used only for fine work. Her name, delicately stenciled on the covers, completed a gift which appealed to the girl with a sense of the thought and care put into its make-up. She looked up, to find Santa Claus’s eyes watching her from behind the tree, his lips smiling beneath the white beard, for her surprise and pleasure were plainly to be read upon her face. She nodded at him, colouring rosily--a picture, in her gray and scarlet frock, as she sat upon the floor surrounded by her gifts, the sight of which was quite sufficient to reward any giver. Almost everything was off the tree. "Hello, here ’s something I nearly missed!" murmured Santa Claus, catching sight of the corner of the white envelope beneath the golden ball. Shirley looked up quickly, saw him struggling with the red ribbon which tied the envelope in place, and rose to her feet, letting a lapful of miscellaneous articles slide to the floor. Everybody was busy, and only Mrs. Bell noticed, and said, gently, "Look out, dear, you ’re dropping things." But Shirley was gone, through the crowd of people and packages, to the door, and had closed it softly behind her. Peter had already had a gift from Shirley, a little thing. She was not the girl to present any man with a keepsake more valuable than the small book of modern verse which had in it certain stirring lines that she knew would be a stimulus to him. So when he saw his own name in typewriting upon the envelope, he opened it without much consideration, thinking it a joke of Ross’s or Rufus’s. But a second envelope was fitted inside the first, and it was labeled, "Please don’t read this in public."