But, with no understanding of the feverish anxiety that filled the heart of the little maiden who was moving briskly about the pleasant kitchen dishing up the dinner, Mr. Blanchard threw open the door with a chuckle. "Took every one of them and paid the money down," he announced, coming to the fire. "Got more than I expected, too, for his scales made them weigh more than ours, so I gained just thirty cents." Debby thought that her heart stopped beating while she stood bewildered in the middle of the floor with a dish of potatoes in her hand, waiting to hear her father say that the extra money should be hers; but he merely asked if dinner were ready, and why she moved so slowly; guessed that sitting up so late made her lazy. All her castles built of ice-cream, candy, pin-cushions, and fancy needle-books, fell to the ground with a crash as she set the dish on the table, leaving her with no appetite for dinner, not even for the first pumpkin-pie of the season. She sat at the table absently tasting the savory pork stew, believing that no one else was ever as miserable as she, and that she should never feel like laughing again, when suddenly she remembered that she had twenty-four cents change left from the dollar that her father gave her to buy school-books, and she would--yes--she would give it to him as she was starting for the Fair, and perhaps he would say that she might keep it. So she was all ready to laugh when Jim asked if the little boys in the big cities wore muzzles like the dog he had seen in town this morning, and when her mother asked if she would take pie, her "yes" was emphatic; for a world of trouble had rolled off her heart, and she was her hopeful self again. After the dinner-dishes were washed, and the baby trotted away to dream-land, Debby stole up to her room to look over the dress she was to wear in the evening; as the ruffles in neck and wrists were fresh, she found there was nothing for her to do but brush it and lay it out on the bed. Still she lingered with an undefined feeling that it was Christmas-day everywhere else, and if she could only---- All the week, while seeing and hearing about the presents the school-girls were making, she had been full of vague longings to do something for some one; but she had neither money nor material, and was not at all sure how a present from her would be received by her father and mother. "Perhaps I might make a pin-ball," she thought, beginning to search through the old chest of drawers that stood at the foot of her bed. In the lowest drawer were odds and ends that she had been collecting for years, and from one corner, carefully wrapped up, she drew a square of black cloth in which was worked in wool a bunch of rose-buds, pink, white and yellow, surrounded by their green leaves. A lady who had boarded with them the last summer had begun it for a pair of slippers, but after making two or three mistakes on it, had given it to Debby.