the processional with flute and cornet.  But as they came slowly up the dim aisle under the arches of Christmas greens, their wide, flowing sleeves falling back from their arms, they made her think of two of Fra Angelico’s trumpet-blowing angels, and she clasped her hands with a quick indrawing of breath.  The high silvery flute notes and the mellow alto of the deep horn were like the voices of the Seraphim, leading all the others in their pean of “Glad tidings of great joy.”  Oh, it was good to be at a school like this she thought with a throb of deep thankfulness.  And it was so good to know that all her plans had worked out happily, and her Christmas gifts for the girls were just what she wanted them to be.  Her thoughts strayed away from the service a moment to recall the little bundles she had hidden in Elise’s and A.O.’s suit-cases, and the package she had ready for Ethelinda, a prettily scalloped linen cover for her dressing-table with her initials, worked in handsome block letters in the centre.

No regrets clouded her face next morning, when she stood at the door, watching the last ’bus load of merry girls start home for the holidays.  She was not going home herself.  Arizona was too far away.  But she had something more thrilling than that in prospect—­a visit to Joyce in New York, she and Betty, and Christmas day with Eugenia, at the beautiful Tremont home out on the Hudson.  She had been hearing about it for the last two years.  And there was Eugenia’s baby she was eager to see, the mischievous little year-old Patricia, “as beautiful as her father and as bad as her naughty Uncle Phil,” Eugenia had written, in her letter of invitation.

And Phil himself would be there,—­maybe.  He was trying to get his work in shape so that he could be home at Christmas time.  Mary did not realize how much her anticipations of this visit were tinged by the glow of that maybe.  Her thoughts ran ahead to that day at Eugenia’s oftener than to any other part of the grand outing.  There was to be a whole week of sight-seeing in New York sandwiched in between the cozy hours at home with Joyce in her studio, and then on the roundabout way back to school a stop-over at Annapolis, for a few hours with Holland.

Filled with such an ineffable spirit of content that she would not have exchanged places with any one in the whole world, she watched the last ’bus load drive away, waving their handkerchiefs all down the avenue, and singing: 

“O Warwick Hall, dear Warwick Hall,
The joys of Yule now homeward call. 
Yet still we’ll keep the tryst with you,
Though for a time we say adieu. 

              Adieu!  Adieu!”

[Illustration:  “THE GIRLISH FIGURE ENVELOPED IN A LONG LOOSE WORKING APRON.”]

CHAPTER VII

IN JOYCE’S STUDIO

The short winter day was almost at an end.  High up in the top flat of a New York apartment house, Joyce Ware sat in her studio, making the most of those last few moments of daylight.  In the downstairs flats the electric lights were already on.  She moved her easel nearer the window, thankful that no sky-scraper loomed between it and the fading sunset, for she needed a full half hour to complete her work.