"Elsie has on a red woollen helmet; and she looks as though she were dyed in gore. I wish it were old William's gore!" The sight of those far-off figures dancing toward her had awaked in Elizabeth an ecstasy, and she began to weave light-footed measures of her own. "Now I am perfectly happy," she sang, but rather to herself as she whirled round the room. Her brother turned toward her and propped his back against the window and folded his arms: he looked like a dwarf who had been a major-general and was conscious of it. "I'll not be happy until that key is found. I don't propose to be defeated." "Oh, Harold, why can't we leave everything as it has always been, if _they_ want it! If papa and mamma wish to have one more old-fashioned Christmas,--and you know it's the last,--if they wish to have one more, so do I and so do you!" "I can't pretend, Elizabeth: they needn't ask me to pretend." Elizabeth began to dance toward him with fairy beautiful mockery:-- "You just pretended you were dead on the battle-field, among your soldiers: you just pretended the moon was shining. You just pretended Elsie had on a red woollen helmet. You just pretended you were fighting William the Conqueror. Oh, no! It is impossible for you to pretend, you poor deficient child!" "That's different, Elizabeth. That's not pretending; that's imagining. You knew it wasn't true: there wasn't any secret about it: it didn't fool anybody. But this pretending about Christmas and about how things get on the Tree, and that idiotic old buffoon!--that's trying to make us believe it is true when it is not true; and that it is real when it is not real! That's the way fathers and mothers raise their little immigrants!" Elizabeth danced before him more wildly, watching him with love and beautiful laughter: "So when papa says he is Santa Claus, he is pretending! And when you say you are King Harold, you're imagining! Why, what a bright child you are! How _did_ you ever get to be a member of _this_ dull family?" "I didn't expect you to understand the difference, because you girls are used to doing both--you girls! How could you know the difference between imagining and pretending--you girls! When you are always doing both--you girls!" "Why, what superior creatures we must be, to do so much more than boys," sang Elizabeth. Her head was filled with fragments of nursery ditties; and the occasion seemed to warrant the production of one. With her eyes resting on him, she made a little dance in his honor and at his expense; and she cadenced her footfalls to the rhythm of her words:-- The innocent lambs!-- They have no shams, And they've nothing but wool to hide them. They cannot pretend Because at one end They've nothing but tails to guide them.