"What a picture!" thought Reba. "The very thing for my Christmas card!
It would do almost without a change, if only she is willing to let me
use her."

"Wake up, Letty!" she called. "Come and let me in!--Why, your front
door isn't closed!"

"The fire smoked a little when I first lighted it," said Letty, rising
when her friend entered, and then softly shutting the bedroom door
that the children might not waken. "The night is so mild and the room
so warm, I couldn't help opening the window to look at the moon on the
snow. Sit down, Reba! How good of you to come when you've been
rehearsing for the Christmas Tree exercises all the afternoon."




[Illustration]

II


"It's never 'good' of me to come to talk with you, Letty!" And the
minister's wife sank into a comfortable seat and took off her
rigolette. "Enough virtue has gone out of me to-day to Christianize an
entire heathen nation! Oh! how I wish Luther would go and preach to a
tribe of cannibals somewhere, and make me superintendent of the
Sabbath-School! How I should like to deal, just for a change, with
some simple problem like the undesirability and indigestibility
involved in devouring your next-door neighbor! Now I pass my life in