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178 iously getting the offerings of love into a condition where the energetic infants could work on them again. It was somewhat difficult to glow and pale with surprise when they received these well-known and well-worn trophies of skill from the tree at the proper time, but they managed to achieve it.

Never at any other season was there such a scrubbing of paws, and in spite of the most devoted sacrifices to the Moloch of cleanliness the excited little hands grew first moist, and then grimy, nobody knew how. "It must leak out of the inside of me," wailed Bobby Baxter when sent to the pump for the third time one morning; but he went more or less cheerfully, for his was the splendid honor of weaving a frame for Lisa’s picture, and he was not the man to grudge an inch or two of skin if thereby he might gain a glorious immortality.

The principal conversation during this festival time consisted of phrases like: "I know what you’re goin’ to have, Miss Edith, but I won’t tell!" "Miss Mary, Sally ’most told Miss Rhoda what she was makin’ for her." "Miss Helen, Pat Higgins went right up to Miss Edith and asked