“You may do just as you please,” said Edith coldly.  “I have given my opinion as to what should be done with her.  It has been considered, by persons more experienced than you, the opinion of an expert.  Girls of her history and standards are not desirable inmates for well-ordered homes.  I shall have nothing to do with her.”

“How about it, Mary?” asked her brother.  “Are you willing to risk her in the high-art atmosphere of the studio?”

“I’m glad to,” Mary answered.  “It’s not often that one gets a chance of being a little useful, and doesn’t the Christmas Carol say, ’Good will to men.’  I’m going down to see her now.”

“You’re a darling,” cried John.  “True blue right through.  Now, we’ll all go down and arrange the transfer.  But, first, I want to give Edith one more chance.  Do you finally and unreservedly—­”

“I do,” said Edith promptly.

“And you, Mary, are you sure of yourself?  Suppose that, when you see her, you change your mind?”

“I’ve given my word,”, she answered.  “I promise to take her.”

“That’s all I want,” said John.

* * * * *

“How could you, John?  How could you?” sobbed Edith.  “How could you tell us—?”

“I told you nothing but the absolute truth.  I meant her to be your Christmas present, but you have resigned her ’with all her works and all her pomps’ to Mary.”

“Ah! but if I refuse to take her from Edith?” Mary suggested.

“Then I get her,” answered Dick blithely, “and she’d be safer with me.  I know what you two girls are thinking of.  You are going to borrow her clothes and make a Cinderella of her.  They are what you care about.  But I love her for herself, her useless hands, her golden hair, her lovely smile—­well, no, I guess we’ll cut out the smile,” he corrected when Maudie, agitated by the appraising hands of the two girls, swung her head completely round and beamed impartially upon the whole assembly.  “It don’t look just sincere to me.”

But there was no insincerity about Maudie.  She was just as sweet-tempered as she looked.  Uncomplainingly, she allowed herself to be despoiled of her finery and wrapped in a sheet while Mary wriggled ecstatically in the heavenly blue dress, pinned the plumed hat on her own bright head and threw the muff into a corner of the darkened drawing-room when she found that it interfered with the free expression of her gratitude to John.

And some months later when the trousseau was in progress, the once despised Christmas guest, now a member in good-standing of Mary’s household, did tireless service, smilingly, in the sewing-room.

“WHO IS SYLVIA?”

“Lemon, I think,” said Miss Knowles, in defiance of the knowledge, born of many afternoons, that he preferred cream.  She took a keen and mischievous pleasure in annoying this hot-tempered young man, and she generally succeeded.  But to-day he was not to be diverted from the purpose which, at the very moment of his entrance, she had divined.