"To tell you the truth, she spoke of it the other day. I told her the Eleanor story, and that rather brought her to her senses. She wouldn't have liked that, you know; but now all the eligible buds are plucked, and she wants me to settle down." "Does she think I'm a settling kind of person?" "She wouldn't if she knew the way you go to my head," David murmured. "Oh, she thinks that you'll do. She likes the ten Hutchinsons." "Maybe I'd like them better considered as connections of yours," Margaret said abstractedly. David lifted the warm little finger to his lips and kissed it swiftly. "Where are you going?" he asked, as she slipped away from him and stood poised in the doorway. "I'm going to put on something appropriate to the occasion," she answered. When she came back to him she was wearing the most delicate and cobwebby of muslins with a design of pale purple passion flowers trellised all over it, and she gave him no chance for a moment alone with her all the rest of the evening. Sometime later she showed him Eleanor's parting letter, and he was profoundly touched by the pathetic little document. As the holidays approached Eleanor's absence became an almost unendurable distress to them all. The annual Christmas dinner party, a function that had never been omitted since the acquisition of David's studio, was decided on conditionally, given up, and again decided on. "We do want to see one another on Christmas day,--we've got presents for one another, and Eleanor would hate it if she thought that her going away had settled that big a cloud on us. She slipped out of our lives in order to bring us closer together. We'll get closer together for her sake," Margaret decided. But the ordeal of the dinner itself was almost more than they had reckoned on. Every detail of traditional ceremony was observed even to the mound of presents marked with each name piled on the same spot on the couch, to be opened with the serving of the coffee. "I got something for Eleanor," Jimmie remarked shamefacedly as he added his contributions to the collection. "Thought we could keep it for her, or throw it into the waste-basket or something. Anyhow I had to get it." "I guess everybody else got her something, too," Margaret said. "Of course we will keep them for her. I got her a little French party coat. It will be just as good next year as this. Anyhow as Jimmie says, I had to get it." "I got her slipper buckles," Gertrude admitted. "She has always wanted them." "I got her the Temple _Shakespeare_," Beulah added. "She was always carrying around those big volumes." "You're looking better, Beulah," Margaret said. "Are you feeling better?" "Jimmie says I'm looking more human. I guess perhaps that's it,--I'm feeling more--human. I needed humanizing--even at the expense of some--some heartbreak," she said bravely. Margaret crossed the room to take a seat on Beulah's chair-arm, and slipped an arm around her.