"And I," beamed Marjory, "never expected a _pretty_, really truly girl's watch, because--worse luck--I'm to get Aunty Jane's awful watch when she dies. Of course I don't want her to die a minute before her time, but getting even _that_ watch seemed sort of hopeless because all Aunty Jane's ancestors that weren't killed by accident lived to enjoy their nineties. But that doesn't prevent Aunty Jane's promising me that clumsy old turnip whenever she's particularly pleased with me." Bettie was too delighted for speech. But her big brown eyes spoke eloquently for her. Rosa Marie accepted the unusual tree, all her Teddy bears, her dolls and other gifts, very much as a matter of course. Nothing it appeared was ever sufficiently surprising to astonish calm little Rosa Marie. "Perhaps," offered Bettie, "she's awfully surprised inside." "I know _I_ am," laughed Mabel. "Inside and out, too." Then, just as Mrs. Crane had decided that Rosa Marie had been outdoors long enough, the Slater carriage arrived for the girls. Mr. Black, beaming at the success of his Christmas party, packed them with all their belongings into the vehicle and they rolled happily away. They stopped at their own homes just long enough to drop most of the gifts they had garnered from the Black-Crane tree; and then Henrietta whisked her friends to the Slater home, where Mrs. Slater entertained them for two hours over a delightful, genuinely English Christmas supper. Henrietta's tree, too, was a very handsome one. A realistic Santa Claus who seemed as English as the supper, since he dropped the letter H just as Simmons always did, distributed the gifts. When the Cottagers opened odd, foreign-looking parcels and found that Henrietta had given each girl a set of three beautiful Oriental boxes with jewelled tops, their delight knew no bounds. They had expected nothing so fine. "You see," explained Henrietta, "I told Father, months ago, to send me a lot of little things to give away for Christmas and of course he bought boxes. I believe he buys every one he sees." "They're darlings," declared Jean, dreamily. "They take you away to far-off places where things smell old and--and magnificent." "It's the grown-upness of my presents that I like," explained eleven-year-old Mabel, with a big sigh of satisfaction. "It's lovely to have people treat you as if you were somebody." "You see," laughed Marjory, "it's only two years ago that an absent-minded aunt of Mr. Bennett's sent Mabel a rattle, and the poor child can't forget it." "Miss 'Enrietta," inquired Santa Claus, anxiously, when the Slater tree, too, had been stripped of all but its decorations, "might Hi be hexcused now? Hi'm due at a Christmas ball and Hi'm hawfully afride these togs is meltin' me 'igh collar." "Yes," laughed Henrietta, "you've done nobly and I hope you'll have a lovely time at the party." It was half-past ten before the Cottagers got to bed that night--a long day because they had risen so early.