Unless one has seen a hop given at the Academy it is difficult to understand the beauty of the scene, and to Peggy it seemed a veritable fairy-land, with its lights, its banners, its lovely girls, uniformed laddies and music “which would make a wooden image dance,” she confided to Mrs. Harold, and added:  “And do you know, I used to rebel and be so cranky when Miss Arnaud came to give me dancing-lessons when I was a little thing.  I just hated it, and how she ever made me learn I just don’t know.  But I had to do as she said, and maybe I’m not glad that I did.  Why, Little Mother, suppose I hadn’t learned.  Wouldn’t I have been ashamed of myself now?”

Mrs. Harold pulled a love-lock as she answered:  “You train your colts, girlie, and they are the better for their training, aren’t they?”

Peggy gave a quick glance of comprehension, and her lips curved in a smile as she said: 

“But they never behave half as badly as I used to with Miss Arnaud.”

And so the Christmas eve was danced away.

Christmas morning was the merriest Peggy had ever known.  Long before daylight she was wakened by Polly shaking her and crying: 

“Peggy, wake up!  Wake up!  What do you think?  Aunt Janet has filled stockings and hung them on the foot of the bed.  She must have slipped in while we were sound asleep, and oh, I don’t wonder we slept after that dance, do you?” rattled on Polly, scrambling around to close the window and turn on the steam, for the morning was a snappy one.

“Whow!  Ooo!” yawned Peggy, to whom late hours were a novelty and who felt as though she had dropped asleep only ten minutes before.  “Why, Polly Howland, it’s pitch dark, and midnight!  I know it is,” she protested.  “How do you know there are stockings there, anyway?”

“I was shivering and when I reached over to get the puff cover my hand touched something bumpy.  I’ve felt of it and I know it’s a stocking.  I never thought of having one, for I thought all those things were way back in little girl days.  But turn on the electric lights quick—­they’re on your side of the bed—­and we’ll see what’s in them; the stockings, I mean.”

Peggy turned the button and the lights flashed up.

“Goodness, isn’t it freezing cold,” she cried.  “Let’s put the puff cover around us,” and rolled up in the big down coverlet the girls dove into their bumpy stockings, exclaiming or laughing over the contents, for evidently the boys had been in the secret, for out of Peggy’s came a little bronze cow and calf labeled “C. and S.”

“Now what in the world does C. and S. stand for, I wonder?” she said.

“Oh, Peggy, those are the initials for ‘Clean and Sober,’ the report the officer-of-the-deck makes when the enlisted men come aboard after being on liberty.  If they are intoxicated and untidy they check them up D. and D.—­which means Drunk and Dirty.  You’ll never hear the last of Betsy Brindle’s caper.”