Cautiously her hand was laid on a box wrapped in white tissue-paper and tied with red ribbons.  “I’ll hate to open it and see, it looks so lovely and Christmasy, but if I don’t see soon I’ll die from wanting to know.  It rattled a little when I put it on the table.  It’s Miss Frances’s present, and I know it isn’t practical.  She’s like I am.  She don’t think Christmas is for plain and useful things.  She thinks it’s for pleasure and pretty ones.  I wonder—­” Her hands were pressed to her breast, and on tiptoes she leaned quiveringly toward the table.  “I wonder if it could be a new tambourine with silver bells on it!  If it is I’ll die for joy, I’ll be so glad!  I broke mine to-night.  I shook it so hard when I was dancing after I got home from the tree that—­Good gracious!  I’ve caught my foot again!  These diamond buckles on my satin slippers are always catching the chiffon ruffles on my petticoats.  I oughtn’t to wear my best things when I’m busy, but I can’t stand ugly ones, even to work in.  Mercy! it’s one o’clock, and the things for Father’s stocking aren’t out yet.”

Out of the bottom drawer of the old-fashioned chest at the end of the room a box was taken and laid on the floor near the stove, into which a small stick of wood was put noiselessly, and carefully Carmencita sat down beside it.  Taking off the top of the box, she lifted first a large-size stocking and held it up.

“I wish I was one hundred children’s mother at Christmas and had a hundred stockings to fill!  I mean, if I had things to fill them with.  But as I’m not a mother, just a daughter, I’m thankful glad I’ve got a father to fill a stocking for.  He’s the only child I’ve got.  If he could just see how beautiful and red this apple is, and how yellow this orange, and what a darling little candy harp this is, I’d be thankfuler still.  But he won’t ever see.  The doctor said so—­said I must be his eyes.”

One by one the articles were taken out of the box and laid on the floor; and carefully, critically, each was examined.

“This cravat is an awful color.”  Carmencita’s voice made an effort to be polite and failed.  “Mr. Robinsky bought it for father himself and asked me to put it in his stocking, but I hate to put.  I’ll have to do it, of course, and father won’t know the colors, but what on earth made him get a green-and-red plaid?  Now listen at me!  I’m doing just what Miss Lucrecia does to everything that’s sent her.  The only pleasure she gets out of her presents is making fun of them and snapping at the people who send them.  She’s an awful snapper.  The Damanarkist sent these cigars.  They smell good.  He don’t believe in Christmas, but he sent Father and me both a present.  I hope he’ll like the picture-frame I made for his mother’s picture.  His mother’s dead, but he believed in her.  She was the only thing he did believe in.  A man who don’t believe in his mother—­Oh, my precious mother!”