It took a little planning to make the presents for six on the one hand do for seven on the other, and vice versa; but with a little skillful dividing and combining it was done at last to Polly Ann's huge satisfaction. Then came the tying-up and the labeling. And here again Polly Ann's absent-mindedness got in its fine work; for the red ribbons and the white tissue-paper went into Mary's box, which left, of course, only the brown paper and hemp twine for John's. "There!" sighed Polly Ann when the boxes themselves were at last tied up and addressed. "Now we 'll see what we shall see!" But even Polly Ann, in spite of her bravely upheld chin, trembled a little as she turned toward the room where Margaret Brackett lay sick. It was a pity, as matters were, that Polly Ann could not have been a fly on the wall of Mary's sitting-room at that moment, for Mary's Jennie was saying gloomily, "I suppose, mother, we'll have Cousin Margaret's Christmas box as usual." "I suppose so," her mother answered. Then with a determined cheerfulness came the assertion, "Cousin Margaret is always very kind and thoughtful, you know, Jennie." There was a pause, broken at last by a mutinous "I don't think so, mother." "Why, _Jennie_!" "Well, I don't. She may be kind, but she isn't--thoughtful." "Why, my daughter!" remonstrated the shocked mother again. "I 'm ashamed of you!" "I know; it's awful, of course, but I can't help it," declared the girl. "If she really were thoughtful, she 'd think sometimes that we 'd like something for presents besides flannel things." "But they're so--sensible, Jennie, for--us." "That's just what they are--sensible," retorted the girl bitterly. "But who wants sensible things always? We _have_ to have them the whole year through. Seems as if at Christmas we might have something--foolish." "Jennie, Jennie, what are you saying? and when Cousin Margaret is so good to us, too! Besides, she does send us candy always, and--and that's foolish." "It would be if 't was nice candy, the kind we can't hope ever to buy ourselves. But it isn't. It's the cheap Christmas candy, two pounds for a quarter, the kind we have to buy when we buy any. Mother, it's just that; don't you see? Cousin Margaret thinks that's the only sort of thing that's fit for us! cheap, sensible things, the kind of things we have to buy. But that does n't mean that we would n't like something else, or that we have n't any taste, just because we have n't the means to gratify it," finished the girl chokingly as she hurried out of the room before her mother could reply. All this, however, Polly Ann did not hear, for Polly Ann was not a fly on Mary's sitting-room wall.