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“If we knew what we could do, Meg?” said Ethel.

“If we knew what we could do or how we could do it,” interrupted Conrad, “why, I’d give my eighty-five cents in a minute. I’d give it to the old Professor to have his curls cut.”

Conrad was a true-hearted fellow, but he was full of mischief.

“Shame on you, Buddy!” said Meg, who was thoroughly serious. “Can’t you be in earnest for just a minute?”

“I am in earnest, Meg. I think your scheme is bully–if it could be worked; but the Professor wouldn’t take our money any more’n we’d take his.”

“Neither would any of them.” This was Ethel’s first real objection.

“Who’s goin’ to offer ’em money?” rejoined Meg.

“I tell you what we might do, maybe,” Conrad suggested, dubiously. “We might buy a lot of fine grub, an’ send it in to ’em sort o’ mysteriously. How’d that do?”

“‘Twouldn’t do at all,” Meg replied. “The idea! Who’d enjoy the finest Christmas dinner in the world by his lone self, with nothin’ but a lookin’-glass to look into and holler ‘Merry Christmas’ to?”

Conrad laughed. “Well, the Professor’s little cracked glass wouldn’t be much of a comfort to a hungry fellow. It gives you two mouths.”

Conrad was nothing if not facetious.

“There you are again, Buddy! Do be serious for once.” And then she added, desperately, “The thing I want to do is to invite’em.”

“Invite!”

“Who?”

“What?”

“When?”

“How?”

“Where?”

Such was the chorus that greeted Meg’s astounding proposition.

“Why, I say,” she explained, nothing daunted, “let’s put all our Christmas money together and get the very best dinner we can, and invite all the roomers to come and eat it with us. Now I’ve said it! And I ain’t foolin’, either.”

“And we haven’t a whole table-cloth to our names, Meg Frey, and you know it!” It was Ethel who spoke again.

“And what’s that got to do with it, Sisty? We ain’t goin’ to eat the cloth. Besides, can’t we set the dish-mats over the holes? ‘Twouldn’t be the first time.”

“But, Meg, dearie, you surely are not proposing to invite company to dine in the kitchen, are you? And who’d cook the dinner, not to mention buying it?”

“Well, now, listen, Sisty, dear. The dinner that’s in my mind isn’t a society-column dinner like those Momsy writes about, and those we are going to invite don’t wear out much table-linen at home. And they cook their own dinners, too, most of ’em–exceptin’ when they eat ’em in the French Market, with a Chinaman on one side of ’em and an Indian on the other.

” I’m goin’ to cook ours, and as for eatin’ in the kitchen, why, we don’t need to. Just see how warm it is! The frost hasn’t even nipped the banana leaves over there in the square. And Buddy can pull the table out on the big back gallery, an’ we’ll hang papa’s old gray soldier blanket for a portiere to keep the Quinettes from lookin’ in; and, Sisty, you can write the invitations an’ paint butterflies on ’em.”

Ethel’s eyes for the first time sparkled with interest, but she kept silent, and Meg continued:

“An’ Buddy’ll bring in a lot of gray moss and latanier to dec’rate with, an’–“

“An’ us’ll wait on the table!”

“Yes, us’ll wait on the table!” cried the twins.

“But,” added Felix in a moment, “you mus’n’t invite Miss Penny, Meg, ’cause if you do F’lissy an’ me ‘ll be thest shore to disgrace the party a-laughin’. She looks thest ezzac’ly like a canary-bird, an’ Buddy has tooken her off till we thest die a-laughin’ every time we see her. I think she’s raised canaries till she’s a sort o’ half-canary herself. Don’t let’s invite her, Sisty.”

“And don’t you think Miss Penny would enjoy a slice of Christmas turkey as well as the rest of us, Felix?”