sort o' half-canary herself. Don't let's invite her, Sisty."

"And don't you think Miss Penny would enjoy a slice of Christmas turkey as well as the rest of us, Felix?"

"No; I fink she ought to eat canary-seed and fish-bone," chirped in Dorothea.

Dorothea was only five, and this from her was so funny that even Meg laughed.

"An' Buddy says he knows she sleeps perched on the towel-rack, 'cause they ain't a sign of a bed in her room."

The three youngest were fairly choking with laughter now. But the older ones had soon grown quite serious in consulting about all the details of the matter, and even making out a conditional list of guests.

When they came to the fortune-teller, both Ethel and Conrad hesitated, but Meg, true to her first impulse, had soon put down opposition by a single argument.

"It seems to me she's the special one to invite to a Christmas party like ours," she pleaded. "The lonesomer an' horrider they are, the more they belong, an' the more they'll enjoy it, too."

"Accordin' to that," said Conrad, "the whole crowd ought to have a dizzy good time, for they're about as fine a job lot of lonesomes as I ever struck. And as for beauty! 'Vell, my y'ung vriends, how you was to-morrow?'" he continued, thrusting his thumbs into his armholes and strutting in imitation of the old Professor.