[Illustration: JULIA WAS ARRESTED ON CHRISTMAS DAY.]

It was on Christmas day that Julia was arrested and led away to the
Patchwork School. It happened in this way: As I said before, Julia's
parents were poor, and it was all they could do to procure the bare
comforts of life for their family; there was very little to spend for
knickknacks. But I don't think Julia would have complained at that; he
would have liked useful articles just as well for Christmas presents,
and would not have been unhappy because he did not find some useless
toy in his stocking, instead of some article of clothing, which he
needed to make him comfortable. But he had had the same things over
and over, over and over, Christmas after Christmas. Every year each of
his Grandmothers knit him two pairs of blue woollen yarn stockings,
and hung them for him on Christmas Eve, for a Christmas present. There
they would hang--eight pairs of stockings with nothing in them, in a
row on the mantel shelf, every Christmas morning.

Every year Julia thought about it for weeks before Christmas, and
hoped and hoped he would have something different this time, but there
they always hung, and he had to go and kiss his Grandmothers, and
pretend he liked the stockings the best of anything he could have had;
for he would not have hurt their feelings for the world.

His parents might have bettered matters a little, but they did not
wish to cross the old ladies either, and they had to buy so much yarn
they could not afford to get anything else.

The worst of it was, the stockings were knit so well, and of such
stout material, that they never wore out, so Julia never really