“It must be awfully nice,” she mused, “to have somebody as devoted to you as the Lieutenant is to Elise and Jimmy is to A.O.  If I were A.O.  I wouldn’t care if the whole school came down to meet him.  I’d want them to see him.  I made up my mind at Eugenia’s wedding that it was safer to be an old maid, but I’d hate to be one without ever having had an ‘affair’ like other girls.  It must be lovely to be called the Queen of Hearts like Lloyd, and to have such a train of admirers as Mister Rob and Mister Malcolm and Phil and all the others.”

There was a wistful look in the gray eyes that peered dreamily out of the window into the gathering dusk of the December twilight.  But it was not the wintry landscape that she saw.  It was a big boyish figure, cake-walking in the little Wigwam kitchen.  A handsome young fellow turning in the highroad to wave his hat with a cheery swing to the disconsolate little girl who was flapping a farewell to him with her old white sunbonnet.  And then the same face, older grown, smiling at her through the crowds at the Lloydsboro Valley depot, as he came to her with outstretched hands, exclaiming, “Good-bye, little Vicar!  Think of the Best Man whenever you look at the Philip on your shilling.”

She was thinking of him now so intently that she lost count of the pieces she had packed into the box she was filling with the squares of sweets, and had to empty them all out and begin again.  But as she recalled other scenes, especially the time she had overheard a conversation not intended for her about a turquoise he was offering Lloyd, she said to herself, “He is for Lloyd.  They are just made for each other, and I am glad that the nicest man I ever knew happens to like the dearest girl in the world.  And I hope if there ever should be ‘a swain amang the train’ for me, he’ll be as near like him as possible.  I don’t know where I’d ever meet him, though.  Certainly not here and most positively not in Lone-Rock.”

“Not like other girls,” she laughed presently, recalling the title of the book Ethelinda was reading.  “That fits me exactly.  No Lieutenant, no Jimmy, and no birthstone ring, and no prospect of ever having any.  But I don’t care—­much.  The candy is a success and Jack is going to have his bloodstone fob.”

With her arms piled full of boxes, she started down to her room.  As she opened the door a burst of music came floating out from the gymnasium where the carol-singers were practising for the yearly service.  This one was a new carol to her.  She did not know the words, but to the swinging measures other words fitted themselves; some lines which she had read that morning in a magazine.  She sang them softly in time with the carol-singers as she went on down the stairs: 

     “For should he come not by the road, and come not by the hill
      And come not by the far sea way, yet come he surely will. 
      Close all the roads of all the world, love’s road is open still.”