the scrubbing water; others off into the woods for balsam-trees for the
evergreen decorations; others to draw water and wait upon the scrubbers.

It was a day of delightful excitement, but this year there was below the
excitement a deep, warm feeling of love and sadness, as both teacher
and pupils thought of to-morrow. There was an additional thrill to the
excitement, that the master was to be presented with a gold watch and
chain, and that this had been kept a dead secret from him.

What a day it was! With wild whoops the boys went off for the dry cedar
and the evergreens, while the girls, looking very housewifely with
skirts tucked back and sleeves rolled up, began to sweep and otherwise
prepare the room for scrubbing.

The gathering of the evergreens was a delightful labor. High up in the
balsam-trees the more daring boys would climb, and then, holding by
the swaying top, would swing themselves far out from the trunk and come
crashing through the limbs into the deep, soft snow, bringing half the
tree with them. What larks they had! What chasing of rabbits along their
beaten runways! What fierce and happy snow fights! And then, the triumph
of their return, laden with their evergreen trophies, to find the big
fire blazing under the great iron kettle and the water boiling, and the
girls well on with the scrubbing.

Then, while the girls scrubbed first the benches and desks, and last of
all, the floors, the boys washed the windows and put up the evergreen
decorations. Every corner had its pillar of green, every window had its
frame of green, the old blackboard, the occasion of many a heartache to
the unmathematical, was wreathed into loveliness; the maps, with their
bewildering boundaries, rivers and mountains, capes, bays and islands,