her stocking Christmas Eve. "It will be so much easiah fo' Santa Claus
to get down these big chimneys."

In the morning when she found four tiny stockings hanging beside her
own, overflowing with candy for Fritz, her happiness was complete.

That night there was a tree in the drawing-room that reached to the
frescoed ceiling. When May Lilly came in to admire it and get her share
from its loaded branches, Lloyd came skipping up to her. "Oh, I'm goin'
to live heah all wintah," she cried. "Mom Beck's goin' to stay heah with
me, too, while mothah an' Papa Jack go down South where the alligatahs
live. Then when they get well an' come back, Papa Jack is goin' to build
a house on the othah side of the lawn. I'm to live in both places at
once; mothah said so."

There were music and light, laughing voices and happy hearts in the old
home that night. It seemed as if the old place had awakened from a long
dream and found itself young again.

The plan the Little Colonel unfolded to May Lilly was carried out in
every detail. It seemed a long winter to the child, but it was a happy
one. There were not so many displays of temper now that she was growing
older, but the letters that went southward every week were full of her
odd speeches and mischievous pranks. The old Colonel found it hard to
refuse her anything. If it had not been for Mom Beck's decided ways, the
child would have been sadly spoiled.

At last the spring came again. The pewees sang in the cedars. The
dandelions sprinkled the roadsides like stars. The locust-trees tossed
up the white spray of their fragrant blossoms with every wave of their