The next morning Mr. Ashe left for New York. “I’ll be back in time to get that box off,” he promised; “you have your part all ready, Honey.”

Aunt Lucinda was going in town with the “Boston relatives.” “Everybody seems going somewhere, except you and me, Grandmother,” Blue Bonnet said, as she stood before the fire in the sitting-room on her return from the station. It was hard to settle down to the every day business of practising and so on.

“You will be riding this afternoon, dear,” Mrs. Clyde answered; and then Aunt Lucinda came down, ready for her trip.

She handed Blue Bonnet a little roll of crisp new bills. “For your Christmas shopping,” she explained. “I am not so unreasonable, my dear, as to expect your present allowance to cover that.”

Blue Bonnet’s face brightened; “I have been rather wondering—” she admitted. “This will do a lot, won’t it, Grandmother?”

228 “Doesn’t that depend?” Mrs. Clyde asked, with a smile.

“And it won’t be a bit too soon to begin, will it?”

“Too soon!” Miss Lucinda repeated. “My dear, I began last Spring!”

“I don’t think I should like that,” Blue Bonnet commented; “I think the hurry at the end is half the fun.”

“There is generally a fair amount of that in spite of all one’s planning,” Grandmother observed.

The talk during the ride that afternoon was largely of the coming Christmas. It pleased Kitty, for the moment, to treat Blue Bonnet as a mere novice in the art of Christmas shopping.

The latter’s reminder that even in Texas there were such things as stores was coolly ignored.

“You must make a list before leaving home,” Kitty insisted, “putting down the names of all the persons you intend giving presents to, and opposite the name the gift you have decided upon.”

“After that—according to Kitty’s own methods,” Debby interrupted, “you must either leave the list at home, or lose it as quickly as possible.”

“And even if you don’t do that,” Ruth said, “just as likely as not you can’t find the thing you’ve decided on.”

“I’ll settle with you two later,” Kitty warned. “Listen, Blue Bonnet. As soon as you’ve bought229 your present you must wrap it up in tissue paper and tie it prettily with ribbon and label it—”

“Right there in the store!” Blue Bonnet protested. “How inconvenient, Kitty!”

“To avoid confusion at the last,” Kitty finished, calmly.

“You wait till you’ve seen Kitty’s room day before Christmas!” Debby remarked.

“I’m making most of my presents,” Sarah said.

“I haven’t made up my mind,” Kitty flicked Black Pete lightly, “whether yours is an example to be followed, or shunned, Sarah. I’d hate to feel lonesome—the way you must.”

Sarah shifted herself in the saddle; she still found riding more of a duty than a pleasure—which Kitty declared was her principal reason for keeping on with it. “Lonesome!” she repeated, wonderingly, “what do you mean?”

“You remember what the poet says—” Kitty’s gray eyes were most demure—“‘Be good and you’ll be lonesome’?”

“Then you’ve never been lonesome, Kitty Clark!” Susy remarked.

Sarah was looking puzzled; she took her English literature very seriously. “I don’t remember any poet saying—”

“Never you mind, Sarah mia,” Blue Bonnet laughed; she checked the mare’s pace, making her—much against her will—keep step with230 Sarah’s horse. “Tell me what you’re making for Christmas? I wish I could make something, too—but my stupid fingers are all thumbs, when it comes to sewing.”

Sarah responded cordially. “It would be nice for you to make something to send back in your box, Blue Bonnet; they’d like it, I’m sure.”

“Grandmother,” Blue Bonnet said, that evening, “can you crochet?”

“I used to.”

“Shoulder shawls?”

“Those among other things.”

“Please—will you show me how? I want to make one for Benita. She’d love it.”

“Have you ever crocheted, Blue Bonnet?”

“Never—Benita tried to teach me to knit once, but it wasn’t a success.”

“Then wouldn’t it be wiser to begin with something simpler?”

“But there won’t be time for two things—and I know Benita would like the shawl. I’ll get the wools to-morrow.”

“There is some worsted and a needle in the lower drawer of my work table. If you like, you shall have your first lesson now, dear.”

Coming down stairs again, Blue Bonnet met Delia in the hall. “A letter for you, miss; one of the parsonage children just brought it up; it’d been sent there.”

231 Blue Bonnet read the address, wonderingly—

“‘Blue Bonnet,’

“Care of the Rev. Sam. Blake,

“Woodford, Mass.”

“Grandmother!” she exclaimed, “it must be from my ‘missionary-box’ girl!”

She opened the letter, with its Texas post-mark. “Shall I read it aloud, Grandmother?”

“I should like to hear it, dear.”

“I don’t know if Blue Bonnet is really your name,” the letter began, “but somehow, I can’t help hoping that it is. My name is Caroline Judson—but I am always called Carita; and I am writing to thank you for the lovely dress you sent me. Nothing like it ever came in any of our other boxes, and at first mother thought it must be a mistake, until we found your note and the purse in the pocket. And if you knew how I thank you for that, too!

“Now I can go Christmas shopping. I’m going to buy each of the boys a knife of his own—then they can all whittle at once. I wonder if you have any brothers? I have four—all younger than I am—but no sisters.

“I wonder a lot about you; I think, perhaps, you’ve gone East to school—that’s where father wants to send me—but that you love it out here in Texas best. I wish you would write to me—I never get any letters—and tell me how old you232 are, and what Woodford is like. Father says he is sure it has a public library—I wish we had one out here. Don’t you love to read, better than anything? I was fourteen last August and all the dress needed was to have a tuck taken in it, and that will make it all the longer getting too short for me. That’s a pretty mixed-up sentence, isn’t it? But you will know what I mean.

“Mother thinks I’d better stop writing now—as it is a first letter. It is so good to be writing to someone.

“Please believe me, very truly and gratefully,

“Yours,
“Carita Adeline Judson.”

“Grandmother!” Blue Bonnet folded up the letter, “Mayn’t I send Carita Adeline Judson a Christmas box?”

“If not a box—a Christmas remembrance, at least,” Grandmother answered.

“Please, a whole box! If you knew how jolly it was unpacking the ones you and Aunt Lucinda always sent! One can put all sorts of little things in a box—I’ll put in something for each of the boys—”

And during the lesson in crocheting which followed, Blue Bonnet planned enough boxes to have called for, Grandmother said, a whole car of their own.

233 She did not take readily to the lesson itself; but that was because she was thinking about something else, she explained.

“A good many ‘else’s,’ I am afraid,” Grandmother answered. “Better unravel that and start afresh.”

“It’s easier just to break it off,” Blue Bonnet suited the action to the word. “I wonder who invented crocheting! I think they might have found something better to do!”

“You are not discouraged already, Blue Bonnet!”

“Not ‘discouraged,’ Grandmother, but sort of—disgusted. I hope Benita properly appreciates her shawl. I wonder whether she would rather have a purple and crimson, or red and yellow? It’ll have to be bright-colored, in any case.”

Mrs. Clyde glanced at the pink worsted chain Blue Bonnet was making; at present, it resembled a corkscrew more closely than anything else. “Isn’t it a bit soon to decide upon the color?”

“I always want to get things settled as soon as possible; besides, I shall feel as if it were really started, once I have bought the wools,” Blue Bonnet urged.

As soon as the regulation Saturday duties were through with the next morning, she was off to buy her wools. They occupied the place of honor on the clubroom table that afternoon.

234 The snow predicted by Denham, though a trifle behind schedule time, had arrived in good earnest; there could be no riding that afternoon.

“And a very good thing, too!” Ruth remarked. “Now we shall have to work.” And presently, forming a circle about the pile of purple and crimson wools, were six work-bags of various sizes and hues.

There were other things on the table; Blue Bonnet’s pies, still intact, Mr. Ashe having deeded his share in them to the club; a dish of nuts and raisins and one of fruit.

“You must have ‘spent the hull ten-cent piece,’ Blue Bonnet!” Kitty said.

“We’re going to have a beautiful time this afternoon,” Blue Bonnet assured them. “Isn’t it the nicest storm?”

It beat against the windows in sudden fitful gusts, the air was full of the white, whirling flakes, and down in the garden were great, drifting heaps.

Susy looked at the white world without and then about the large, square room. “I always did want to belong to a club—and have a real clubroom,” she said contentedly.

It had been a nursery in former years, as the window bars and the bright colored prints on the walls still testified. Now the center table, the wide lounge, generously supplied with the biggest and softest of cushions, the quaint medley of chairs,235 big and little, the low hassocks at either end of the broad hearth, made it, in the eyes of club members, an ideal gathering-place. There was nothing breakable—in the ordinary sense—and there were no curtains at the four windows,—just shades that could be raised quite out of sight when necessary; and on club days, a bright fire burned in the deep fireplace, behind the tall wire screen.

“So you’ve got your work, Blue Bonnet!” Sarah said, taking up a skein of the purple wool. “Have you learnt the stitch?”

“I’m—learning it. Please—before you all begin, listen to this—” and she read them the letter received the night before.

“So that is what it was,” Sarah said. “How oddly she addressed it!”

“Do you suppose she would like to have the rest of us write to her?” Ruth asked.

“I’m sure of it!” Blue Bonnet cried, delightedly. “I mean to answer this right away—and I’m going to send her a Christmas box.”

“Oh,” Susy dropped the square of linen she was hemstitching, “let’s make it a ‘We are Seven’ box.”

“And all write a letter to put in it,” Amanda added.

“I do think you are the dearest girls!” Blue Bonnet exclaimed enthusiastically.

“Let’s plan now,” Ruth proposed.

236 “Not until Blue Bonnet gets at her work!” Sarah advised.

“Sarah’s working you a motto, Blue Bonnet,—” Kitty said, “‘How doth the little busy’—and so forth, and so forth.”

“Kitty!” Sarah protested, “You know I am doing nothing of the kind.”

“Well, you can—now I’ve put the idea into your head.”

“The way I learned it was like this—” Blue Bonnet produced her ball of pink worsted and crochet needle rather reluctantly—
“‘How doth the busy little bee,
Delight to bark and bite;
And gather honey all the day,
To eat it up at night.’”

Sarah looked pained, but Kitty dropped her lace work to run around and hug Blue Bonnet. “That’s the best version I’ve heard yet.”

“I don’t approve of parodies,” Sarah remarked. “Are you going to make a pink shawl, Blue Bonnet?”

“Grandmother thought I had better practice my stitch a little before starting regularly to work,” Blue Bonnet answered.

Kitty’s brows arched expressively. “And ‘Grandmother’ was quite right, my child! How did you get it shirred like that; is it a new stitch?”

237 “Why shouldn’t I shirr it, if I like it that way?” Blue Bonnet laid her work on the table, patting and pulling at it with impatient fingers.

“But you shouldn’t hold your finger out like that!” Sarah corrected presently. “You’ll get the habit.”

“No, I won’t!” Blue Bonnet declared; she looked from one busy worker to another. How nimble every pair of hands in the room, except hers, seemed.

“I—I hate crocheting!&rdqu............