Papa has such a sweet tooth that he'd a thousand times rather have a box of this than a dozen silk mufflers and shaving cases and such things that usually fall to a man's lot at Christmas." If the girls in this exclusive school thought it strange that one of their number should start a money-making enterprise, no whisper of it reached Mary.

Her sturdy independence forbade any air of patronage, and she was such a general favourite that whatever she did was passed over with a laugh.

The few who might have been inclined to criticize found it an unpopular thing to do.

The object for which she was working enlisted every one's interest.

Jack would have ground his teeth with mortification had he known that every girl in school was interested in his getting a bloodstone watch-fob in his Christmas stocking, and daily discussed the means by which it was being procured.
Orders came in rapidly, and Mary spent every spare moment in cracking pecans, and picking out the kernels so carefully that they fell from the shells in unbroken halves.