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Half an hour after tea she had the square all done. “I’ve got it done,” said she, and she carried it over to her aunt Lucretia that it might be inspected.

Aunt Lucretia put on her spectacles and looked closely at it. “You’ve sewed it very well,” she said, finally, in a tone of severe commendation.

“You can sew well enough if you put your mind to it.”

“That’s what I’ve always told her,” chimed in Aunt Maria. “There’s no sense in her slighting her work so, and taking the kind of stitches she does sometimes. Now, Lucretia, it’s time for you to go to bed.”

Lucretia went lingeringly across the wide old sitting-room, then across the old wide dining-room, into the kitchen. It was quite a time before she got her candle lighted and came back, and then she stood about hesitatingly.

“What are you waiting for?” Aunt Lucretia asked, sharply. “Take care; you’re tipping your candle over; you’ll get the grease on the carpet.”

“Why don’t you mind what you’re doing?” said Aunt Maria.

Young Lucretia had scant encouragement to open upon the subject in her mind, but she did. “They’re going to have lots of presents on the Christmas-tree,” she remarked, tipping her candle again.

“Are you going to hold that candle straight or not?” cried Aunt Lucretia. “Who is going to have lots of presents?”

“All the other girls.”

When the aunts got very much in earnest about anything they spoke with such vehement unison that it had the effect of a duet; it was difficult to tell which was uppermost. “Well, the other girls can have lots of presents; if their folks want to get presents for ’em they can,” said they. “There’s one thing about it, you won’t get anything, and you needn’t expect anything. I never approved of this giving presents Christmas, anyway. It’s an awful tax an’ a foolish piece of business.”

Young Lucretia’s lips quivered so she could hardly speak. “They’ll think it’s–so–funny if–I don’t have–anything,” she said.

“Let ’em think it’s funny if they want to. You take your candle an’ go to bed, an’ don’t say any more about it. Mind you hold that candle straight.”

Young Lucretia tried to hold the candle straight as she went up-stairs, but it was hard work, her eyes were so misty with tears. Her little face was all puckered up with her silent crying as she trudged wearily up the stairs. It was a long time before she got to sleep that night. She cried first, then she meditated. Young Lucretia was too small and innocent to be artful, but she had a keen imagination, and was fertile of resources in emergencies. In the midst of her grief and disappointment she devolved a plan for keeping up the family honor, hers and her aunts’, before the eyes of the school.

The next day everything favored the plan. School did not keep; in the afternoon both the aunts went to the sewing society. They had been gone about an hour when young Lucretia trudged down the road with her arms full of parcels. She stole so quietly and softly into the school-house, where they were arranging the tree, that no one thought about it. She laid the parcels on a settee with some others, and stole out and flew home.

The festivities at the school-house began at seven o’clock. There were to be some exercises, some recitations and singing, then the distribution of the presents. Directly after tea young Lucretia went up to her own little chamber to get ready. She came down in a surprisingly short time all dressed.

“Are you all ready?” said Aunt Lucretia.

“Yes, ma’am,” replied young Lucretia. She had her hand on the door-latch.

“I don’t believe you are half dressed,” said Aunt Maria. “Did you get your bow on straight?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I think she’d better take her things off, an’ let us be sure,” said Aunt Lucretia. “I’m not goin’ to have her down there with her clothes on any which way, an’ everybody making remarks. Take your sacque off, Lucretia.”