The Christmas Monks are a jolly brethren; the robes of their order are white, gilded with green garlands, and they never are seen out at any time of the year without Christmas wreaths on their heads.  Every morning they file in a long procession into the chapel, to sing a Christmas carol; and every evening they ring a Christmas chime on the convent bells.  They eat roast turkey and plum pudding and mince-pie for dinner all the year round; and always carry what is left in baskets trimmed with evergreen, to the poor people.  There are always wax candles lighted and set in every window of the convent at nightfall; and when the people in the country about get uncommonly blue and down-hearted, they always go for a cure to look at the Convent of the Christmas Monks after the candles are lighted and the chimes are ringing.  It brings to mind things which never fail to cheer them.

[Illustration:  Going into the chapel.]

But the principal thing about the Convent of the Christmas Monks is the garden; for that is where the Christmas presents grow.  This garden extends over a large number of acres, and is divided into different departments, just as we divide our flower and vegetable gardens; one bed for onions, one for cabbages, and one for phlox, and one for verbenas, etc.

Every spring the Christmas Monks go out to sow the Christmas-present seeds after they have ploughed the ground and made it all ready.

There is one enormous bed devoted to rocking-horses.  The rocking-horse seed is curious enough; just little bits of rocking-horses so small that they can only be seen through a very, very powerful microscope.  The Monks drop these at quite a distance from each other, so that they will not interfere while growing; then they cover them up neatly with earth, and put up a sign-post with “Rocking-horses” on it in evergreen letters.  Just so with the penny-trumpet seed, and the toy-furniture seed, the skate-seed, the sled-seed, and all the others.

Perhaps the prettiest and most interesting part of the garden, is that devoted to wax dolls.  There are other beds for the commoner dolls—­for the rag dolls, and the china dolls, and the rubber dolls, but of course wax dolls would look much handsomer growing.  Wax dolls have to be planted quite early in the season; for they need a good start before the sun is very high.  The seeds are the loveliest bits of microscopic dolls imaginable.  The Monks sow them pretty close together, and they begin to come up by the middle of May.  There is first just a little glimmer of gold, or flaxen, or black, or brown as the case may be, above the soil.  Then the snowy foreheads appear, and the blue eyes, and black eyes, and, later on, all those enchanting little heads are out of the ground, and are nodding and winking and smiling to each other the whole extent of the field; with their pinky cheeks and sparkling eyes and curly hair there is nothing so pretty as