“Let’s run!” she cried to Rosamond, and they raced back to school.

She fell asleep that night without one smallest tear.

The next morning Betty dressed hastily, and catching up her mandolin, set out into the corridor.

Something swung against her hand as she opened the door.  It was a great bunch of holly, glossy green leaves and glowing berries, and hidden in the leaves a card:  “Betty, Merry Christmas,” was all, but only one girl wrote that dainty hand.

“A winter rose,” whispered Betty, happily, and stuck the bunch into the ribbon of her mandolin.

Down the corridor she ran until she faced a closed door.  Then, twanging her mandolin, she burst out with all her power into a gay Christmas carol.  High and sweet sang her voice in the silent corridor all through the gay carol.  Then, sweeter still, it changed into a Christmas hymn.  Then from behind the closed doors sounded voices: 

“Merry Christmas, Betty Luther!”

Then Constance O’Neill’s deep, smooth alto flowed into Betty’s soprano; and at the last all nine girls joined in “Adeste Fideles.”  Christmas morning began with music and laughter.

“This is your place, Betty.  You are lord of Christmas morning.”

Betty stood, blushing, red as the holly in her hand, before the breakfast table.  Miss Hyle, the teacher at the head of the table, had given up her place.

The breakfast was a merry one.  After it somebody suggested that they all go skating on the pond.

Betty hesitated and glanced at Miss Hyle and Miss Thrasher, the two sad-looking teachers.

She approached them and said, “Won’t you come skating, too?”

Miss Thrasher, hardly older than Betty herself, and pretty in a white frightened way, refused, but almost cheerfully.  “I have a Christmas box to open and Christmas letters to write.  Thank you very much.”

Betty’s heart sank as she saw Miss Hyle’s face.  “Goodness, she’s coming!”

Miss Hyle was the most unpopular teacher in school.  Neither ill-tempered nor harsh, she was so cold, remote and rigid in face, voice, and manner that the warmest blooded shivered away from her, the least sensitive shrank.

“I have no skates, but I should like to borrow a pair to learn, if I may.  I have never tried,” she said.

The tragedies of a beginner on skates are to the observers, especially if such be school-girls, subjects for unalloyed mirth.  The nine girls choked and turned their backs and even giggled aloud as Miss Hyle went prone, now backward with a whack, now forward in a limp crumple.

But amusement became admiration.  Miss Hyle stumbled, fell, laughed merrily, scrambled up, struck out, and skated.  Presently she was swinging up the pond in stroke with Betty and Eleanor O’Neill.

“Miss Hyle, you’re great!” cried Betty, at the end of the morning.  “I’ve taught dozens and scores to skate, but never anybody like you.  You’ve a genius for skating.”