For all her appreciative speeches, Mary approached her task that afternoon with inward reluctance.  Only a grim determination to do her best to earn that dollar was her motive at first, and she helped herself by imagining it was the Princess Winsome’s sunny hair which she was lathering and rubbing so vigorously.  Ethelinda closed her eyes, enjoying the touch of the light fingers, and wishing the operation could be prolonged indefinitely.  Somehow this intimate, personal contact seemed to create a friendliness for each other they had never known before.  Presently Mary was chatting away almost as cordially as if it were Elise’s dusky curls she had in her fingers, or A.O.’s brown braids.

Under promise of secrecy she told of Elise’s masquerade the night before, and of A.O.’s wild curiosity about the lady in black.  She had persecuted them all morning with questions, and they were almost worn out trying to evade them and to baffle her.  Ethelinda appreciated being taken into her confidence, for she had been more lonely than her pride would allow her to admit.  Her patronizing airs and ill-guarded speech about being exclusive in the choice of friends had offended most of the lower-class girls.  Slowly she was learning that her old standards would not bear comparison with Madam Chartley’s and the Lady Evelyn’s and that she must accept theirs if she would have any friends at Warwick Hall.  Her friendship with Mary took a long stride forward that afternoon.

The rest of the money came in various ways.  Mary found appropriate quotations for a set of unique dinner cards, to fit the pen and ink illustrations which one of the Seniors bought to give her sister, a prominent club-woman, whose turn it was to give the yearly club dinner.  She did some indexing for the librarian and some copying for Miss Chilton, and by the end of the week not only was Jack’s fob on its way to Arizona, with presents for the rest of the family, but there was enough left in her purse to pay her share towards the mock Christmas tree.

It gave her a thrill to think that out of the entire school she had been chosen as one of the committee of nine for the delightful task of tying up the parcels for that tree.  It was such bliss to share all the secrets and anticipate the surprise and laughter each ridiculous gift would call forth.  And when all the joking and rollicking was over there was the carol service on the last night of the term, so sweet and solemn and full of the real Christmas gladness, that it was something to remember always as the crowning beauty of that beautiful time.

Old Bishop Chartley came down as usual for the service, and the chapel, fragrant with pine and spicy cedar boughs and lighted only by tall white candles, was just as Lloyd had described it, when she told of the Bishop’s talk about keeping the White Feast on the birthday of the King.  When the great doors swung wide for the white-robed choir to enter, Mary knew that it was only the Dardell twins leading in