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“I’m sure I don’t know what she could have meant,” pondered Clorinda. “I do wish I could find out if it would help me any. I’d love to remember a few of my friends at least. There’s Miss Mitchell … she’s been so good to me all this year and helped me so much with my studies. And there’s Mrs. Martin out in Manitoba. If I could only send her something! She must be so lonely out there. And Aunt Emmy herself, of course; and poor old Aunt Kitty down the lane; and Aunt Mary and, yes–Florence too, although she did treat me so meanly. I shall never feel the same to her again. But she gave me a present last Christmas, and so out of mere politeness I ought to give her something.”

Clorinda stopped short suddenly. She had just remembered that she would not have liked to say that last sentence to Aunt Emmy. Therefore, there was something wrong about it. Clorinda had long ago learned that there was sure to be something wrong in anything that could not be said to Aunt Emmy. So she stopped to think it over.

Clorinda puzzled over Aunt Emmy’s meaning for four days and part of three nights. Then all at once it came to her. Or if it wasn’t Aunt Emmy’s meaning it was a very good meaning in itself, and it grew clearer and expanded in meaning during the days that followed, although at first Clorinda shrank a little from some of the conclusions to which it led her.

“I’ve solved the problem of my Christmas giving for this year,” she told Aunt Emmy. “I have some things to give after all. Some of them quite costly, too; that is, they will cost me something, but I know I’ll be better off and richer after I’ve paid the price. That is what Mr. Grierson would call a paradox, isn’t it? I’ll explain all about it to you on Christmas Day.”

On Christmas Day, Clorinda went over to Aunt Emmy’s. It was a faded brown Christmas after all, for the snow had not come. But Clorinda did not mind; there was such joy in her heart that she thought it the most delightful Christmas Day that ever dawned.

She put the queer cornery armful she carried down on the kitchen floor before she went into the sitting room. Aunt Emmy was lying on the sofa before the fire, and Clorinda sat down beside her.

“I’ve come to tell you all about it,” she said.

Aunt Emmy patted the hand that was in her own.

“From your face, dear girl, it will be pleasant hearing and telling,” she said.

Clorinda nodded.

“Aunt Emmy, I thought for days over your meaning … thought until I was dizzy. And then one evening it just came to me, without any thinking at all, and I knew that I could give some gifts after all. I thought of something new every day for a week. At first I didn’t think I could give some of them, and then I thought how selfish I was. I would have been willing to pay any amount of money for gifts if I had had it, but I wasn’t willing to pay what I had. I got over that, though, Aunt Emmy. Now I’m going to tell you what I did give.

“First, there was my teacher, Miss Mitchell. I gave her one of father’s books. I have so many of his, you know, so that I wouldn’t miss one; but still it was one I loved very much, and so I felt that that love made it worth while. That is, I felt that on second thought. At first, Aunt Emmy, I thought I would be ashamed to offer Miss Mitchell a shabby old book, worn with much reading and all marked over with father’s notes and pencillings. I was afraid she would think it queer of me to give her such a present. And yet somehow it seemed to me that it was better than something brand new and unmellowed–that old book which father had loved and which I loved. So I gave it to her, and she understood. I think it pleased her so much, the real meaning in it. She said it was like being given something out of another’s heart and life.