"What a shame!" sympathized Jerry. "It was such a beauty."

"I'm so sorry you lost it," condoled Irma.

"So am I," echoed Constance. "I don't remember it. I'm not very observing about jewelry, but I'm dreadfully sorry just the same."

"It was----" began Marjorie, but a joyful whistle far up the street and the faint ring of running feet put a sudden end to her description.

Lawrence Armitage, Hal Macy and the Crane had espied the girls from afar and come with winged feet to join them. Their evident pleasure in the girls' society, coupled with the indescribably funny antics of the Crane, who had apparently appointed himself an amus.e.m.e.nt committee of one, drove away Marjorie's distress over her loss for the time being, and it was not until later that she remembered that she had not described the b.u.t.terfly pin to Constance.

CHAPTER XVIII

PLAYING SANTA CLAUS TO CHARLIE

The next morning Marjorie wrote a description of her pin. It was placed at the end of the bas.e.m.e.nt corridor above a small bulletin board, where those who pa.s.sed might read. She wondered if the loss of her talisman would bring her bad luck. Before the day was over she gloomily decided that it had, for during the last hour Miss Merton accused her of whispering to the girl across the aisle, when she merely leaned forward in her seat to pick up her handkerchief. Smarting with the teacher's injustice, Marjorie politely but steadily contradicted the accusation, and two minutes later found herself on the way to Miss Archer's office, Miss Merton walking grimly beside her.

Miss Archer had been through a particularly trying day, and was irritable, while Miss Merton was consumed with spiteful rage at Marjorie's "impertinence," and did not hesitate to put her side of the story forward in a most unpleasant fashion. The princ.i.p.al turned coldly to Marjory with, "Apologize to Miss Merton at once, Miss Dean, for disturbing her," and Marjorie said, with uplifted chin and resentful eyes, "I am sorry you thought I whispered, Miss Merton, for I did not open my lips." Something in the proud carriage of the girl's head caused Miss Archer to divine the truth of the firm statement, and she said, more gently, "Very well, you are excused, Miss Dean; but I do not wish to hear again that you have failed in courtesy to your teachers. This is not the first time I have received such reports of you."

With a steady, reproachful look at Miss Merton, whose shifting eyes refused to meet hers, Marjorie walked from the room, ready to burst into tears, and when the all but interminable afternoon was ended, hurried home to the shelter of her faithful captain's arms and poured forth her grief and wrongs.

But the notice of the lost pin posted on the bulletin board brought forth no trace of the vanished b.u.t.terfly. Marjorie made a valiant effort to thrust aside her heavy sense of loss and allow the spirit of Christmas to enter her heart. She had promised Constance her help in arranging Santa Claus' visit to Charlie, and, when on Christmas eve, at a little after seven o'clock she set out for the Stevens' weighed down by numerous festively-wrapped, be-ribboned packages, she was filled with that quiet exaltation that attends the performance of a good deed and happier than she had been for several days.

"Shh!" Constance met her at the door, a warning finger on her lips.

"Hasn't he gone to sleep yet?" asked Marjorie, sliding into the house in mouse-like fashion.

"Yes, but I thought he never would," returned Constance, with a relieved sigh. "What do you think? Father is playing at the theatre to-night for the first time. The pianist is ill. The leader of the orchestra was here this afternoon to see if father would take his place. We can never be grateful enough to you, Marjorie, for having father and Uncle John play at your party."

"Let's talk about Charlie's little wagon," proposed Marjorie, quickly.

"Nora popped and strung a lot of corn for me. It's in this bag. Do tell me where I can put the rest of this armful of things."

Constance made a place on one end of an old velvet couch for them.

"This is yours." Marjorie flourished a wide, flat package tied with long, graceful loops of narrow pale blue ribbon. "I tied it with blue because that's your color. Don't you dare peep at it until to-morrow morning. These two little packages are for your father and Mr. Roland, and all the rest is for Charlie."

"He will be the happiest boy in Sanford," said Constance, her own face radiant. "He never dreamed of a Christmas like this."

"Can we begin now?" asked Marjorie. "I'm so impatient to see how this wagon will look when we get it fixed."

"Wait a minute." Constance disappeared through the door leading into the kitchen, returning with one arm piled high with evergreens, the other wound around a small balsam tree.

"Lawrence Armitage brought me this yesterday," she explained. "A party of boys went to the woods to cut down Christmas trees. He brought me this cunning little tree and all this ground pine and holly. Wasn't it nice in him?"

"Perfectly dear," agreed Marjorie. "I wonder if there is enough popcorn for the tree, too. I have a lot of little ornaments and candles at home.

It won't take long to go there and back." She reached for her hat and coat as she spoke and in spite of Constance's protests was soon speeding home after the required decorations.

"I made good time, didn't I?" she observed, as half an hour later she burst into the Stevens' living-room without knocking.

Then the work of making one small boy's Christmas merry was begun in earnest. An hour later the st.u.r.dy baby balsam stood loaded with its crop of strange fruit, and the faithful, rickety wagon, whose imperfections were quite hidden beneath trails of thick, fragrant ground pine and sprays of flame-berried holly, looked as though it had received a visitation from the fairies. A diminutive black leather violin case, encircled with a wreath of ground pine and tied with a huge red bow, leaned against one wheel of the magic vehicle, and the cunning chair with its absurd little arms and leather cushion was also twined with green.

"It's too lovely for words," breathed Constance, her admiring gaze fastened upon the once dingy corner now bright with the flowers of love and generosity, which had bloomed in all shapes and sizes of packages to gladden one youngster's heart.

"I wish I could be here when first he sees it," commented Marjorie.

"I'll be fast asleep then, for he told me that Mr. Roland promised to call him very early."

"He proposed staying up all night, but I was not enthusiastic over that plan," laughed Constance.

"I must go," decided Marjorie. "The hands of that clock fairly fly around the dial. I'm sure I just came and yet they point to a quarter to eleven." She reached reluctantly for her hat and her wraps.

"How can I ever thank you, Marjorie," began Constance, but Marjorie put a soft hand over her friend's lips.

"Please don't," she implored. "I've loved to do it." She held out both hands to Constance. "I wish you the merriest sort of a merry Christmas."

"I hope you will have a perfectly wonderful day," was the earnest response. "You'll come over to-morrow and see how happy you've made Charlie and all of us, won't you?"

"I'll come," promised Marjorie. "You couldn't keep me away."

She reached home just in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of her father disappearing up the stairs with a huge box in his arms, while her mother hastily dropped some thing into the drawer of the library table.

"There, I caught both of you," she cried in triumph. "Confess you were hiding things from me, weren't you?"

"I'll answer your questions to-morrow," beamed her father.

"I forgive you both as long as the things are for me," was her calm declaration.

"What is she talking about?" solemnly asked Mr. Dean, with an air of complete mystification.

"You know perfectly well what I'm talking about!" exclaimed Marjorie, making a rush for him.

"Help, help!" he called feebly. "The battalion has been ambushed and the general captured."

"And held prisoner," added Marjorie, severely. "Unless he informs the second lieutenant what is in a certain big, white box with which he escaped upstairs, he shall be court-martialed."

"Put off the court-martial until to-morrow and perhaps I'll tell,"

compromised the captured general, throwing his free arm across his lieutenant's shoulder in a most unmilitary manner.

"All right, I'll let you go on parole," returned his daughter. "I'm too sleepy to do guard duty to-night. How I wish you might have seen Charlie's little wagon when we finished it! We had a tree, too."

Forgetting that she was sleepy, Marjorie poured forth the story of her evening's work to her sympathetic listeners and it was ten minutes to twelve before she said good-night and went yawning to bed.

Eight o'clock Christmas morning found her awake and stirring. Wrapped in her bathrobe, she pattered downstairs to the living-room, her arms full of bundles, but her father and mother were already there before her, and their packages greatly outnumbered hers. After the kisses and greetings of the day had been given her father handed the big white box into her outstretched arms. "Shall I tell you----" he began.

"Don't you dare! I'm going to see for myself. Oh-h-h!" She had the lid off, and was clasping to her breast a ma.s.s of soft brown fur. "Oh, General, you dear thing! You sha'n't ever go to prison again." She smothered her father in the coat and a rapturous embrace, causing him to protest mildly. Her mother's gift of a bracelet watch also evoked another burst of reckless enthusiasm.

What a happy hour it was, to be sure, and how beautifully all her friends had remembered her! Marjorie could hardly bear to leave her presents long enough to eat breakfast, and when after breakfast she left home for her Christmas call on the Stevens, she felt as though she must sing "Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men," at the top of her voice as she walked.