He spent most of Christmas Eve alone in his room, turning over old letters, and aviation magazines with pictures of Hawk Ericson, wondering whether he might not go back to that lost world. Josiah Bagby, Jr., son of the eccentric doctor at whose school Carl had learned to fly, was experimenting with hydroaeroplanes and with bomb-dropping devices at Palm Beach, and imploring Carl, as the steadiest pilot in America, to join him. The dully noiseless room echoed the music of a steady motor carrying him out over a blue bay. Carl's own answer to the tempter vision was: "Rats! I can't very well leave the Touricar now, and I don't know as I've got my flying nerve back yet. Besides, Ruth----" Always he thought of Ruth, uneasy with the desire to be out dancing, laughing, playing with her. He was tormented by a question he had been threshing out for days: Might he permissibly have sent her a Christmas present? He went to bed at ten o'clock--on Christmas Eve, when the streets were surging with voices and gay steps, when rollicking piano-tunes from across the street penetrated even closed windows, and a German voice as rich as milk chocolate was caressing, "_Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum, wie grün sind deine Blätter._"... Then slept for nine hours, woke with rapturous remembrance that he didn't have to go to the office, and sang "The Banks of the Saskatchewan" in his bath. When he returned to the house, after breakfast, he found a letter from Ruth: The Day before Xmas & all thru the Mansion The Maids with Turkey are Stirring--Please Pardon the Scansion. DEAR PLAYMATE,--You said on our tramp that I would make a good playmate, but I'm sure that I should be a very poor one if I did not wish you a gloriously merry Xmas & a New Year that will bring you all the dear things you want. I shall be glad if you do not get this letter on Xmas day itself if that means that you are off at some charming country house having a most katische (is that the way it is spelled, probably not) time. But if by any chance you _are_ in town, won't you make your playmate's shout to you from her back yard a part of your Xmas? She feels shy about sending this effusive greeting with all its characteristic sloppiness of writing, but she does want you to have a welcome to Xmas fun, & won't you please give the Touricar a pair of warm little slippers from RUTH GAYLORD WINSLOW. P.S. Mrs. Tirrell has sent me an angel miniature Jap garden, with a tiny pergola & real dwarf trees & a bridge that you expect an Alfred Noyes lantern on, & Oh Carl, an issa goldfish in a pool! MISS R. WINSLOW.