“Yes; that’ll be just the right thing!” exclaimed Lulu.  “Papa, you always do know best about everything.”

“I hope you’ll stick to that idea, Lu,” laughed Max.  “You seem to have only just found it out; but Grace and I have known it this long while; haven’t we, Gracie?”

“Yes, indeed!” returned the little sister.

“And so have I,” said Lulu, hanging her head and blushing, “only sometimes I’ve forgotten it for a while.  But I hope I won’t any more, dear papa,” she added softly, with a penitent, beseeching look up into his face.

“I hope not, my darling,” he responded in tender tones, caressing her hair and cheek with his hand, “and the past shall not be laid up against you.”

“Papa, will you take us to the city, as you did last year, and let us choose, ourselves, the things we are going to give?” asked Max.

“I intend to do so,” his father said.  “Judging from the length of your lists, I think we will have to take several trips to accomplish it all.  So we will make a beginning before long, when the weather has become settled; perhaps the first pleasant day of next week, if you have all been good and industrious about your lessons.”

“Have we earned our quarters to-day, papa?” asked Grace.

“I think you are in a fair way to do so,” he answered smiling, “but you still have a chance to lose them between this and your bedtime.”

“It’s just before we get into bed you’ll give them to us, papa?” Lulu said inquiringly.

“I shall tell you at that time whether you have earned them, but I may sometimes only set the amount down to your credit and pay you the money in a lump at the end of the week.”

“Yes, sir; we’ll like that way just as well,” they returned in chorus.

Violet had come in and taken possession of an easy chair on the farther side of the glowing grate.

Looking smilingly at the little group opposite, “I have a thought,” she said lightly; “who can guess it?”

“It’s something nice about papa; how handsome he is, and how good and kind,” ventured Lulu.

“A very close guess, Lu,” laughed Violet; “for my thought was that the Woodburn children have as good and kind a father as could be found in all the length and breadth of the land.”

“We know it, Mamma Vi; we all think so,” cried the children.

But the captain shook his head, saying, “Ah, my dear, flattery is not good for me.  If you continue to dose me with it, who knows but I shall become as conceited and vain as a peacock?”

“Not a bit of danger of that!” she returned gaily.  “But I do not consider the truth flattery.”

“Suppose we change the subject,” he said with a good-humored smile.  “We have been making out lists of Christmas gifts and would like to have your opinion and advice in regard to some of them.”

“You shall have them for what they are worth,” she returned, taking the slips of paper Max handed her, and glancing over them.