The snow drifts were piled high about The Savins.  The fences were buried, great heaps of snow lay on the broad east terrace and the path to the front door had become a species of tunnel.  Christmas was close at hand and the earth, as if to make ready for the sweetest festival of the year, had wrapped itself in a thick, soft blanket, dazzling and pure as the stars shining in the eastern sky above.

Christmas was always a high day at The Savins.  Ever since Theodora was a little child, the family tradition had been unbroken, the family rite unchanged.  Around the Christmas basket and before the Christmas fire, the young McAlisters had gathered for their childish revels.  Now, grown to manhood and womanhood, they still gathered there and, for one night in the year at least, they were children still, and their revel had lost none of its old charm.

“I am embarrassed in my mind,” Cicely said, one day just before Christmas.  “Half my presents were bought before I was a pauper, half of them not till later.  It makes it look as if I were partial; but I’m not.  It’s poverty not partiality that ails me, and you mustn’t any of you care.”

“Isn’t Cicely wonderful?” Hubert said, when she had gone.  “Her pluck is beyond anything I have ever seen.  I didn’t suppose she had it in her.”

“I did,” Allyn responded loyally.  “There’s more stuff to Cis than shows on the surface, and you never catch her crying over spilt milk.”

Two hours later, however, he did find her in tears.  She was alone in the house, and he discovered her in the library, her face buried in the sofa pillows.

“Oh, please don’t tell,” she sobbed.  “I didn’t suppose you would find me.  I don’t mean to be a baby; but it is going to be so horrid to be poor and not have things, and I did want to give you something lovely for Christmas.”

Allyn was a boy, and, boylike he was not prone to sentiment.  He only said,—­

“Don’t worry your head about that, Cis.  You’ve given me a good deal more than you know, this last year.”

Surprised, she sat up and stared at him.

“Me?  I?  I’ve not given you a thing, Allyn, only those cuff buttons, your birthday.”

He looked at her steadily for a moment, Then he said,—­

“Maybe not.  I thought you had, though.”

Suddenly Cicely understood him.

“There is no sort of sense in your going away, Cis,” Billy said to her, as soon as he heard of her talk with Gifford Barrett.  “Your Cousin Theodora and I both would be delighted to have you stay here for the present.  The fact is, child, we shall miss you awfully, and can’t stand it to have you go.  You will stay with us; won’t you?”

“I wish I could; but it wouldn’t be fair.  Papa needs me.”

“You can’t do any good, Cis.  You’re better off here.”

“To live on you, and leave papa alone to stand things, the best way he can?  That’s not my way, Cousin Will.”