I spoke of her frock when she showed me my room.

“Oh, do you like it?” she asked.  “Jimmie hates to see me in dark things.  He says that when I wear this he can see his heroine.”

“Is she like you?”

“Not a bit.  She is rather untamed.  Jimmie does her very well.  She positively gallops through the play.”

“And do you never gallop?”

She shook her head.  “It’s a good thing that I don’t.  If I did, Jimmie would never write.  He says that I keep his nose to the grindstone.  It isn’t that, but I love him too much to let him squander his talent.  If he had no talent, I should love him without it.  But, having it, I must hold him up to it.”

She was very sure of herself, very sure of the rightness of her attitude toward Jimmie.  “I know how great he is,” she said, as we went down, “and other people don’t.  So I’ve got to prove it.”

* * * * *

It was at dinner that I first noticed a change in Jimmie.  It was a change which was hard to define.  Yet I missed something in him—­the enthusiasm, the buoyancy, the almost breathless radiance with which he had rekindled our dying fires.  Yet he looked young enough and happy enough as he sat at the table in his velvet studio coat, with his crisp, burnt-gold hair catching the light of the candles.  He and his wife were a handsome pair.  His manner to her was perfect.  There could be no question of his adoration.

After dinner we had the tree.  It was a young pine set up at one end of the long dining-room, and lighted in the old fashion by red wax candles.  There were presents on it for all of us.  Jimmie gave me an adorably illustrated Mother Goose.

“You are the only other child here, Miss Standish,” he said, as he handed it to me.  “I saw this in a book-shop, and couldn’t resist it.”

We looked over the pictures together.  They were enchanting.  All the bells of old London rang out for a wistful Whittington in a ragged jacket; Bo-Peep in panniers and pink ribbons wailed for her historic sheep; Mother Hubbard, quaint in a mammoth cap, pursued her fruitless search for bones.  There was, too, an entrancing Boy Blue who wound his horn, a sturdy darling with his legs planted far apart and distended rosy cheeks.

“That picture is worth the price of the whole book,” said Jimmie, and hung over it.  Then suddenly he straightened up.  “There should be children in this old house.”

I knew then what I had missed from the tree.  Elise had a great many gifts—­exquisite trifles sent to her by sophisticated friends—­a wine-jug of seventeenth-century Venetian glass, a bag of Chinese brocade with handles of carved ivory, a pair of ancient silver buckles, a box of rare lacquer filled with Oriental sweets, a jade pendant, a crystal ball on a bronze base—­all of them lovely, all to be exclaimed over; but the things I wanted were drums and horns and candy canes, and tarletan bags, and pop-corn chains, and things that had to be wound up, and things that whistled, and things that squawked, and things that sparkled.  And Jimmie wanted these things, but Elise didn’t.  She was perfectly content with her elegant trifles.