soul reached out to the Island. She sighed, then she looked up. The crowd had thickened since she last surveyed it. Four steps led down to the schoolroom from the outer world: on the top step was a lady, well dressed—oh! marvel!—and beside her a man—a gentleman. Well, Judy supposed all these poor dear people were gentlefolk, but these two were of her world. As she gazed her eyes and those of the man met; the lady was lost in the crowd, and Judy saw her no more. The man made straight for the stall where were the framed sketches, the white dress, fur-trimmed, the russet hair and green eyes of Judy, and the brownly-black, blue-ribboned Alcibiades. But before he reached them a wave of buyers broke on the shore of Judy’s stall, and he had been watching her for nearly half an hour before a young woman’s long-deferred choice of a Christmas gift for a grandfather fell happily on a pair of purple bed-socks, and, for the moment, Judy breathed free.
“I told you so,” said the Aunt, rattling money in a leather bag; “I knew just before Christmas was the time. Everybody has to give Christmas presents to all their relations. You see! the things are going like wildfire.”
“Yes, Aunt,” said Judy. Alcibiades took
