At the close of the recitation a hastily scribbled note from Betty was handed to her.

“I have just found out,” it ran, “that Mammy Easter will be unable to furnish her usual pralines and Christmas sweets to her Warwick Hall customers this year.  Why don’t you try your hand at that Mexican candy Lloyd mentioned.  If the girls once get a taste it will be ’advertised by its loving friends’ and you can sell quantities.  I am going to the city this afternoon, and can order the sugar for you.  If they wire the order you ought to be able to get it within a week. E.S.”

Mary went up stairs two steps at a bound, stepping on the front of her dress at every other jump, and only saving herself from sprawling headlong as she reached the top, by catching at A.O., who ran into her on the way down.  She could not get back to her bank book and her Christmas list soon enough, to see how much cash she had on hand, and compute how much she dared squeeze out to invest in material.

A week later the Domestic Science room was turned over to her during recreation hour, and presently a delicious odour began to steal out into the halls, which set every girl within range to sniffing hungrily.  Betty explained it to several, and there was no need to do anything more.  Every one was on hand for her share when the samples were passed around, and the new business venture was discussed in every room.

“Wouldn’t you like to know Jack Ware?” asked Dorene of Cornie, her mouth so full of the delicious sweets that she could only mumble.  “Any man who can inspire such adoration in his own sister must be nothing short of a wonder.”

“I feel that I do know him,” responded Cornie, “That I am quite well acquainted with him, in fact.  And I quite approve of ‘my brother Jack.’  It’s queer, too, for usually when you hear a person quoted morning, noon and night you get so that you want to scream when his name is mentioned.  Now there’s Babe Meadows.  Will you ever forget the way she rang the changes on ‘my Uncle Willie’?  I used to quote that line from Tennyson under my breath—­’A quinsy choke thy cursed note!’ It was ’Uncle Willie says this isn’t good form’ and ’Uncle Willie says they don’t do that in England’ till you got worn to a frazzle having that old Anglomaniac eternally thrown at your head.  But the more Mary quotes Jack the better you like him.”

“I wonder how he feels about Mary taking this way to earn his Christmas present.”

“Oh, of course he doesn’t know she is doing it, and of course he wouldn’t like it if he did.  But he’d have hard work stopping her.  She is as full of energy and determination as a locomotive with a full head of steam on, and I imagine he’s exactly like her.  She fondly imagines that he will be governor of Arizona some day.”

“There!” exclaimed Dorene.  “That suggests the dandiest thing for us to put on the mock Christmas tree for her.  A Jack-in-the-box!  She’s always springing him on an unsuspecting public, and just about as unexpectedly as those little mannikins bob up.  She has used him so often to ’point her morals and adorn her tales’ that every girl in school will see the joke.”