“I—­can’t!” called back his sister, but the next moment Nat was beside her.

“Come on,” he ordered, “get on your togs.  We’ve got to get a hospital tree.  The ladies insist it shall be handpicked, and we’ve got to go to Tanglewood Park.”

“But do I really have to go?” begged Dorothy.  “It’s cold to ride, and I wanted to—?”

“Put pink bows on red slippers!  Oh, chuck it, Doro!  I perfectly hate the smell of Christmas.  Tom and Roland are going, and so is Tavia.”

He made a queer face as he said this—­one of those indescribable boy illustrations quite beyond interpretation.

“Is she?” asked Dorothy, not knowing anything better to say.

“And Tom and Roland, I repeat.  We are going to duck the kiddies.  Too cold for little boys.”

“Oh, then I shan’t go,” declared Dorothy.  “We’ve been promising Joe and Roger so long.”

“But they don’t want to go,” insisted Nat.  “Sammy Blake is launching his iceboat.”

“Oh, I suppose that is a superior attraction even to ghosts,” said Dorothy, laughing, “But why do we have to get a tree from the park?  Couldn’t we buy one?”

“Just like a girl.  We couldn’t possibly buy trees last week, because—­they would not be hand-picked.  This week why can’t we buy them and—­hang the handpicked,” he finished.  “Now, do you understand, little girl, that the tree is to be in the near-infant ward in the hospital?”

“Oh, I suppose there’s no use arguing,” decided Dorothy.  “I may as well give in.”

“May better.  Hurry along, now.  We’re to have a buffet lunch, and get gone directly after.  It’s time to eat now,” and he glanced at his watch.

Certainly the morning had passed—­and the afternoon would no doubt be equally short.  Dorothy hurried to get her warm wraps, called to Tavia, and was at the lunch-table before Nat had returned from the garage, whence he brought the Fire Bird.

“If you do not get caught in a snowstorm this time,” commented Major Dale, “I will begin to lose faith in my prophetic bones.  They ache for heavy snow.”

“Put it off until to-morrow, Uncle Frank,” advised Nat.  “Then we may get the runners out.”

“No, it’s not that long off,” insisted the major, cringing perceptibly under the aches and pains for the coming storm.  “I shouldn’t wonder but it reached us by sundown.”

Ned was much better, able to sit near the window and wave to the departing ones.

Tavia looked almost happy.  Somehow, since she determined to “stick to Dorothy,” much of her apparent trouble seemed to have disappeared.  She was brighter than she had been for days, and even Nat threw off the restraint he had shown toward her lately.  At The Elms they picked up Tom, with Roland’s regrets, and with a dangerous-looking hatchet in hand—­to bag the game with.

“Roland had another dinner date,” he explained.  “I’m glad I’m not handsome.”