“I beg your pardon—­I heard you—­and it was so like home the day before Christmas—­”

“Did you hear the heathen rage?” cried Katherine.

“Dolls for Aunt Anne’s mission,” explained Constance.

“You’re so forehanded that all your presents went a week ago, I suppose,” Eleanor swept clear a chair.  “The clan O’Neill is never forehanded.”

“You’d think I was from the number of thumbs I’ve grown this morning.  Oh, misery!” Eleanor jerked a snarl of thread out on the floor.

Betty had never cared for “Cork” but now the hot worried faces of its girls appealed to her.  “Let me help.  I’m a regular silkworm.”

The O’Neills assented with eagerness, and Betty began to sew in a capable, swift way that made the others stare and sigh with relief.

The dolls were many, the O’Neills slow.  Betty worked till her feet twitched on the floor; yet she enjoyed the morning, for it held an entirely new sensation, that of helping some one else get ready for Christmas.

“Done!”

“We never should have finished if you hadn’t helped!  Thank you, Betty Luther, very, very much!  You’re a duck!  Let’s run to luncheon together, quick.”

Somehow the big corridors did not seem half so bleak echoing to those warm O’Neill voices.

“This morning’s just spun by, but, oh, this long, dreary afternoon!” sighed Betty, as she wandered into the library.  “Oh, me, there goes Alice Johns with her arms loaded with presents to mail, and I can’t give a single soul anything!”

“Do you know where ‘Quotations for Occasions’ has gone?” Betty turned to face pretty Rosamond Howitt, the only senior left behind.

“Gone to be rebound.  I heard Miss Dyce say so.”

“Oh, dear, I needed it so.”

“Could I help?  I know a lot of rhymes and tags of proverbs and things like that.”

“Oh, if you would help me, I’d be so grateful!  Won’t you come to my room?  You see, I promised a friend in town, who is to have a Christmas dinner, and who’s been very kind to me, that I’d paint the place cards and write some quotation appropriate to each guest.  I’m shamefully late over it, my own gifts took such a time; but the painting, at least, is done.”

Rosamond led the way to her room, and there displayed the cards which she had painted.

“You can’t think of my helplessness!  If it were a Greek verb now, or a lost and strayed angle—­but poetry!”

Betty trotted back and forth between the room and the library, delved into books, and even evolved a verse which she audaciously tagged “old play,” in imitation of Sir Walter Scott.

“I think they are really and truly very bright, and I know Mrs. Fernell will be delighted.”  Rosamond wrapped up the cards carefully.  “I can’t begin to tell you how you’ve helped me.  It was sweet in you to give me your whole afternoon.”

The dinner-bell rang at that moment, and the two went down together.