Jean laughed.  It was impossible to get past Kit’s wall of evasion when she chose to take refuge behind it.

“Well, never mind how it has happened,” she said happily.  “I’m sure that you managed it in some way, and I can tell you right now, it has happened in the nick of time.  You have no idea, Kit, how I have dreaded going back to the city and leaving things as they are.  Dad seems to get so discouraged now when matters go wrong, and that throws the load of keeping up right on mother’s shoulders.”

“I know it,” Kit rejoined, “but if it’s anything to you all, I’d be willing to bet anything that right this minute Uncle Cassius is springing some glad tidings down-stairs that will turn the tide of fortune.”

“Oh, Kit,” begged Doris, “don’t you and Jean talk like that, because I can’t understand what you’re driving at; tell it all out at once.”

But Kit only slipped from the bed, and started to dance around the room provokingly, with many mysterious gestures.

“Supposing, curious damsel, that I were to speak unto you in the mystic language of past ages, and say that this windfall has come to the robins’ nest out of the tomb of Amenotaph, out of the desert of Ra, supposing,” she had to stop and chuckle at the look of utter astonishment on Doris’ round eager face, “supposing I was to tell you that Annui had smiled upon the revelation, and that the sacred circle had given up its secret at the punch of your sister’s delicate thumb.  You see, even when I tell you, you don’t understand, so you’ll just have to wait until Uncle Cassius himself tells the story.”

“Kit, you poor child,” Jean exclaimed, laughingly, “you’re raving.  They’ll have the tree up by now, and it’s long after ten.  Mother said that we were to take turns going down in the dark and putting our presents wherever we wanted to.”

“I want to be last of all,” Kit announced.  “Doris, you come on in my room and help me wrap and tie the bundles.  Good-night, sweet sisters; happy dreams.”

But for the next hour after the lights went out, strange, flitting figures slipped through the halls and down-stairs into the front room, where the giant hemlock stood.  And the very last one of all was clad in a bath robe and wore a black skullcap.

Perhaps no one in all Gilead, or indeed wherever the message of the angels might reach in the hearts of men that night, had grasped the inner meaning of their song as the old Dean.  He had just finished placing his gifts upon the tree, and was turning to leave, when suddenly from the room above, where Jean and Helen slept, there came a wonderful sound.  The old clock down the hall was striking midnight, and keeping to the custom of those fortunate enough to have been born in the Robbins family, the girls had opened their windows to the silent moonlit glory of the night, and sang in chorus: