“Dear old mumsey:  I hope you have received your pin, and that you have carefully hidden away Johnnie’s steam engine.  I know he will be delighted with it.  Now, mumsey, dear, I have a great favor to ask.  Could you possibly let me have five dollars more?  I will send it back before my holiday is over, because I only want to lend it to some one, and I am sure to get it back.  But, you see, no one has ever asked such a favor of me before, and I do wish I could accommodate them.  Don’t say anything to dad about it, but just send it along if you possibly can, and I will surely send it back very soon.  I am having a lovely time, but feel I ought to be home with you all for my real Christmas.

“Lovingly, your daughter,

“Octavia.”

“There,” she finished, “I guess that will do.  I do hate to bother poor, darling, little hard-working mother, but what can I do?  Perhaps I will be home for Christmas, too.”

Then she wrote another letter—­to her father.  She made the same request, couched in different terms.  Perhaps they would each send the money, and then she could pay Nat.

CHAPTER XV

DOROTHY AS A COMFORTER

Roland Scott and Tom Jennings were on hand that evening, when the young folks at The Cedars “put their heads together” for the selection of Mother Goose characters.

Mrs. White “presided,” and in the matter of reading rhymes and impersonating the characters, it must be admitted the young gentlemen had the advantage.

It was decided that the tableaux, or charades, would be presented “without labels,” and the audience would be permitted to guess what they stood for in nursery lore.

“They won’t need another guess on Dorothy’s ‘Bo Peep,’” said Tom.  “That crook is more famous in history than that of the original shepherds.  ’Bo Peep’ is always a winner.”

“I am sure,” retaliated Dorothy, “they will know yours instantly.  But it is a pity we have to make them living pictures.  You will hardly be able to refrain from actually putting in your thumb if we provide one of Norah’s pies.”

“And what a perfectly darling ‘Little Jack Horner!’” added Tavia, for the characters were being selected with a view to making them as ridiculous as possible, and Tom would make a very funny “Jack Horner.”  Tom surveyed his thumb in anticipation.

Roland and Tavia were assigned “Jack Spratt and His Wife.”  Roland could be made up to look very lean, indeed, and Tavia was just stout enough to be “practical for building purposes.”  Her face was of the broad, good-natured type, and so her figure could readily be built up to correspond.

Nat insisted on being “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater,” and wanted to have the privilege of selecting the pretty Eva Brownlie to put in the pumpkin shell, “for,” argued Nat, “that is the only way any fellow will ever be able to keep the wily Eva.”