“Not so very,” answered Tavia evasively.

“Good-night,” called Dorothy.

“Good-night,” replied Tavia.

But Tavia’s head did not ache.  She “tumbled in” as she promised, but did not immediately try to sleep.  She was, instead, trying to arrange some things clearly before her much-confused faculties—­trying to decide what she should write home.  She had her mother’s pin and Johnnie’s steam engine, thanks to Dorothy’s good nature, but what about paying Dorothy back?  Where was the money to come from, and what possible explanation could she make?  Tell her she had not spent her own five dollars, but instead had mailed it to a strange woman in a strange place, on the printed promise that in place of five she would get—­

“But how on earth can I ever tell so silly a thing to Dorothy?” she found herself answering.  “Why, it is too absurd—­”

She deliberately got out of bed, went to the drawer of her dresser and took from it an envelope.  It was the very one she had dropped in the train, and which the strange woman noticed.

Closing the door softly, Tavia took from the blue envelope a printed slip.  She looked it over critically, then with a look of utter disgust replaced it in the envelope, and folding that so it would fit into a very small compass, put it away again.

“And to think I should have gotten Nat into such a thing!” she was thinking.  “It was good of him to be so nice about it—­but, all the same, I did feel awfully, and I wish this very minute I was at home in my own shabby little room, next to Johnnie’s.”

Tavia rarely cried, but this time she felt there was simply nothing else left to do.  Bravely she struggled to choke her sobs; then at last fixing her mind successfully upon a plan to straighten out her difficulties (or, at least, she thought it would adjust them), the girl with the tear-stained, hazel eyes and the much-tangled, bronze braids, found herself forgetting where she was, what she was thinking about, whether she was Nat or Dorothy.

And then Tavia was asleep.

The cracking of everything out of doors next morning brought both Tavia and Dorothy to the realization of the fact that another day had come—­another day bitterly cold.

They had hoped for snow, but Tavia, being first to reach the window, called to Dorothy that not a single flake had fallen.

“Then perhaps we can ride out to the woods and get a Christmas tree,” said Dorothy, mindful of little Roger’s wish of the previous night.

“We would freeze,” declared Tavia.  “Why, everything is snapping and cracking—­but there must be fine skating,” she broke off abruptly.

“Likely,” answered Dorothy, “but I am anxious to get the tree, and if we do not get it before the storm comes we will have to take a boughten one.  But I do so love a hand-picked tree.  It has always been a part of our Christmas to get one.”

Tavia was not at all particular about that part of it—­whether it was hand-picked or peddler-purchased, and she said so promptly.