CLARA.  Oh, well, you ought just to pretend it’s the money in his pocket makes him so heavy; then you’d find him dead easy.

[Meanwhile the SERVANTS have arranged the table, taken out the extra leaves and made it square, and left the room.  They now reenter, bringing in a gorgeously decorated and lighted Christmas tree.  There is at once a loud chorus of delighted approval from the women.  The SERVANTS place the tree in the centre of the table.  The women who are sitting rise and come near to examine the tree.

RUTH.  What a beautiful tree, Blanche!

BLANCHE.  The boy is to have it to-morrow morning—­it’s really his tree! [TOMPSON brings in a large basket containing seven small stockings and six small boys’ socks—­very small stockings and very small socks.  They are made of bright and different colors and are stuffed into absurd, bulgy shapes.] There’s a name on each one.  Come along now!

[Taking out a little sock.  The women crowd around the basket and each hangs a sock on the tree, MISS GODESBY and CLARA standing on chairs.

CLARA. [Reading the name on her sock.] Oh! mine’s for Mr. Mason.  What’s in it, Blanche?

BLANCHE.  I really can’t tell you.  I asked the clerk where I bought it what it was for, and he said he didn’t know; it was a “Christmas present.”

MISS GODESBY. [Laughing.] Oh, I know the kind!  Mine’s for Howard Godesby.  What’s his present?

BLANCHE.  A silver golf marker.

MISS GODESBY.  But he doesn’t play golf!

BLANCHE.  Well, he ought to; it’ll keep him young.

CLARA.  It will be all right, anyway, Julia! You can give it away to some one next Christmas.

MISS SILLERTON.  What’s in Mr. Trotter’s?

BLANCHE.  Oh, that present has almost been my death!  Men are so hard to find things for!  I had put in a gold pencil for his key chain, but to-night while we were eating our oysters, I saw him show a beauty that his mother had given him this morning!  So I whispered to Jordan between the soup and fish to change Mr. Ryder’s name to Mr. Trotter’s stocking, and put Mr. Trotter’s name on the one that had a cigarette case in it.  I sneaked a message down to Dick on my dinner card—­was it all right?—­and he sent back word during the game that Trotter only smoked cigars; so before the ices were passed I shuffled Mr. Trotter’s and Mr. Mason’s names,—­I’d given Mason the cigar case,—­and just as Jordan signalled to me the transfer had been successfully effected, I heard Trotter casually observe he’d been obliged to give up smoking entirely—­doctor’s orders!

[They laugh punctiliously, rather bored by BLANCHE’S long account.

MRS. HUNTER.  Isn’t the tree stunning?

CLARA. [Getting down from her chair.] It makes the table look like one of Mr. Trotter’s “informal little dinners.”