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“Yes ‘m, Mr. Corbet.”

But the bell rang a fourth time, and a fifth.

“Isabel, you can go to the door. Mr. Corbet must have stepped out.”

So Isabel went out, but returned with a face as broad as a soup-plate. “Mr. Corbet is there, ma’am.”

Sixth door-bell peal,–seventh, and eighth.

“Mary, I think you had better see if Mr. Corbet has gone away.”

Mary returns, face one broad grin.

“No, ma’am, Mr. Corbet is there.”

Heavy steps in the red parlor. Side door-bell–a little gong, begins to ring. Front bell rings ninth time, tenth, and eleventh.

Saint John, as we call him, had seen that something was amiss, and had kindly pitched in with a dissertation on the passage of the Red-River Dam, in which the gravy-boats were steamships, and the cranberry was General Banks, and the aids were spoons. But, when both door-bells rang together, and there were more steps in the hall, Huldah said, “If you will excuse me,” and rose from the table.

“No, no, we will not excuse you,” cried Clara Hastings. “Nobody will excuse you. This is the one day of the year when you are not to work. Let me go.” So Clara went out. And after Clara went out, the door-bells rang no more. I think she cut the bell-wires. She soon came back, and said a man was inquiring his way to the “Smells;” and they directed him to “Wait’s Mills,” which she hoped would do. And so Huldah’s and Grace’s stupendous housekeeping went on in its solid order, reminding one of those well-proportioned Worcester teas which are, perhaps, the crown and glory of the New England science in this matter. I ventured to ask Sam Root, who sat by me, if the Marlborough were not equal to his mother’s.

And we sat long; and we laughed loud. We talked war and poetry and genealogy. We rallied Helen Touro about her housekeeping; and Dr. Worster pretended to give a list of Surgeons and Majors and Major-Generals who had made love to Huldah. By and by, when the grapes and the bonbons came, the sixteen children were led in by Maria Munro, who had, till now, kept them at games of string and hunt the slipper. And, at last, Seth Corbet flung open the door into the red parlor to announce “The Tree.”

Sure enough, there was the tree, as the five saints had prepared it for the invited children,–glorious in gold, and white with wreaths of snow-flakes, and blazing with candles. Sam Root kissed Grace, and said, “O Grace! do you remember?” But the tree itself did not surprise the children as much as the five tables at the right and the left, behind and before, amazed the Sainted Five, who were indeed the children now. A box of the vin rouge de Bourgogne, from Louis, was the first thing my eye lighted on, and above it a little banner read, “Huldah’s table.” And then I saw that there were these five tables, heaped with the Christmas offerings to the five saints. It proved that everybody, the world over, had heard that they had settled down. Everybody in the four hemispheres,–if there be four,–who had remembered the unselfish service of these five, had thought this a fit time for commemorating such unselfish love, were it only by such a present as a lump of coal. Almost everybody, I think, had made Seth Corbet a confidant; and so, while the five saints were planning their pretty tree for the sixteen children, the North and the South, and the East and the West, were sending myrrh and frankincense and gold to them. The pictures were hung with Southern moss from Barthow. Boys, who were now men, had sent coral from India, pearl from Ceylon, and would have been glad to send ice from Greenland, had Christmas come in midsummer; there were diamonds from Brazil, and silver from Nevada, from those who lived there; there were books, in the choicest binding, in memory of copies of the same word, worn by travel, or dabbled in blood; there were pictures, either by the hand of near friendship, or by the master hand of genius, which brought back the memories, perhaps, of some old adventure in “The Service,”–perhaps, as the Kaulbach did, of one of those histories which makes all service sacred. In five and twenty years of life, these women had so surrounded themselves, without knowing it or thinking of it, with loyal, yes, adoring friends, that the accident of their finding a fixed home had called in all at once this wealth of acknowledgment from those whom they might have forgotten, but who would never forget them. And, by the accident of our coming together, we saw, in these heaps on heaps of offerings of love, some faint record of the lives they had enlivened, the wounds they had stanched, the tears they had wiped away, and the homes they had cheered. For themselves, the five saints–as I have called them–were laughing and crying together, quite upset in the surprise. For ourselves, there was not one of us who, in this little visible display of the range of years of service, did not take in something more of the meaning of,–

“He who will be chief among you, let him be your servant.”

The surprise, the excitement, the laughter, and the tears found vent in the children’s eagerness to be led to their tree; and, in three minutes, Ellen was opening boxes, and Huldah pulling fire-crackers, as if they had not been thrown off their balance. But, when each boy and girl had two arms full, and the fir balsam sent down from New Durham was nearly bare, Edgar Bartlett pointed to the top bough, where was a brilliant not noticed before. No one had noticed it,–not Seth himself,–who had most of the other secrets of that house in his possession. I am sure that no man, woman, or child knew how the thing came there: but Seth lifted the little discoverer high in air, and he brought it down triumphant. It was a parcel made up in shining silvered paper. Seth cut the strings.

It contained twelve Maltese crosses of gold, with as many jewels, one in the heart of each,–I think the blazing twelve of the Revelations. They were displayed on ribbons of blue and white, six of which bore Huldah’s, Helen’s, Ellen Philbrick’s, Hannah’s, Miss Peters’s, and Seth Corbet’s names. The other six had no names; but on the gold of these was marked,–“From Huldah, to —-” “From Helen, to —–” and so on, as if these were decorations which they were to pass along. The saints themselves were the last to understand the decorations; but the rest of us caught the idea, and pinned them on their breasts. As we did so, the ribbons unfolded, and displayed the motto of the order:–

“Henceforth I call you not servants, I have called you friends.”

It was at that Christmas that the “ORDER OF LOVING SERVICE” was born.