THE scene which met the gaze when an hour later the young men were ushered into the long drawing-room of the Vance house was one well-calculated to remove all gloomy, pessimistic reasoning. Warmth, gaiety, pretty women, luxury,—all sent the blood leaping through the veins in delightful anticipation.

Their entrance was greeted by a shout of welcome.

“Oh, Aubrey! I am so glad you are come,” cried Molly from the far end of the room. “Fancy tomorrow being Christmas! Shall we be ready for all that company tomorrow night and the ballroom, dining room and hall yet to be trimmed? Is it possible to be ready?”

“Not if we stand dawdling in idle talk.” This from “Adonis,” who was stretched full length on the sitting-room sofa, with a cigarette between his lips, his hands under his handsome head, surrounded by a bevy of pretty, chattering girls, prominent among whom was Cora Scott, who aided and abetted Charlie in every piece of mischief.

Molly curled her lip but deigned no reply.

Bert Smith, from a corner of the room where he was about ascending a step-ladder, flung a book heavily at Adonis’s lazy figure.

“Don’t confuse your verbs,” exclaimed Aubrey. “How can you stand when you are lying down, and were you ever known to do anything else but dawdle, Adonis—eh?”

“I give it up,” said Charlie, sleepily, kicking the book off the sofa.

“Is this an amateur grocery shop, may I ask, Miss Vance?” continued Aubrey as he and Briggs made their way to their hostess through an avalanche of parcels and baskets strewn on the tables and the floor.

Molly laughed as she greeted them. “No wonder you are surprised. I am superintending the arrangement of my poor people’s gifts,” she explained. “They must all be sent out tonight. I don’t know what I should have done without all these good people to help me. But there are piles to be done yet. There is the tree, the charades, etc., etc.,” she continued, in a plaintive little voice.

“More particularly cetra, cetra,” said Aubrey from Bert’s corner where he had gone to help along the good works of placing holly wreaths.

“Oh, you, Aubrey—stop being a magpie.” Aubrey and Molly were very matter of fact lovers.

“Molly,” again broke in Charlie, “suppose the box from Pierson’s has never come, won’t you be up a tree?” and the speaker opened his handsome eyes wide, and shook off his cigarette-ash.

Molly maintained a dignified silence toward her brother. The firelight danced and dwelt upon her lovingly. She was so pretty, so fair, so slender, so graceful. Now in her gray plush tea-gown, with her hair piled picturesquely on the top of her small head, and fixed there with a big tortoise-shell pin, it would have been difficult to find a more delightful object for the gaze to rest upon.