Stranger within the Gates Read Online Free PDF

to offer, but I've got to make a few changes in the last part. I guess I'd better do it myself. But don't you worry; I'll make out. Are you coming along up to the assembly room, or have you got something else to do? If you haven't, you might hand me up things to put on the tree. You've got pretty good taste yourself!"
    Mary Elizabeth's eyes blazed into pleasure.
    "Sure I'll come. Miss Marian thought there'd be someplace where I could help." And she swung into step with him as they climbed the stairs to the assembly room where the great tree was already in place in the middle of the platform.
    Oh, hang! said Stan to himself in the midst of his answering smile to the brown-eyed girl. There I go! Makin' up to Lizbeth! And I just got done vowing I'd never look at a girl as long as I live, after what my fool brother has done, spoiling Christmas and everything for us all, getting married before he gets educated!
    Thus he chided himself as he climbed the ladder. And then Mary Elizabeth brought him a lovely silver star to hang on the very top of the tree, and he stooped over and looked into her sweet brown eyes that were so unaware of their own loveliness and forgot all about his resolves, working happily away, the cloud all gone from his brow.
    There were so many girls and fellows there, all working so eagerly, hanging laurel and holly and wreaths, and they were all so merry and full of laughter and jokes--how could one remember amid all that about the sorrow that had come at home? He was here now, in school, and must go through with it. Mother had said that. This was what he must do now, and do it well. So he gave himself to the tree and took each emblem or ball or crystal angel or thread of silver from the eager young hand of the brown-eyed girl and hung it in place, as though it were a sacred trust. So it was not till the tree was finished--every light in place, every thread of tinsel hanging straight like an icicle--and he came down from the ladder and went to his desk to try to work over that last page of his essay that the horror of home came back to his young heart and gripped it with a more mature pain than any he had yet experienced in his young life.
    Â 
    ***
    Â 
    Down on the floor below, Fae had been surrounded by her special friends, all clamoring at once to tell her the latest developments concerning the Christmas play in which she had a part.
    "You know, Betty Lou is mad , Fae, and says she won't be in the play at all because Miss Jenkins won't let her wear pajamas instead of a nightgown when she comes out to hang up her stocking. She says everybody will laugh at her, that nobody wears nightgowns now, and anyway, she's got some lovely new silk pajamas and she wants to wear them. But Miss Jenkins says it's an old-time play and pajamas wouldn't be in character, and if Betty Lou says any more about it, we can't have the play. But I told her you know the part and could take her place."
    "Say, Fae," burst in another girl, "whyn't you go an' talk to Betty Lou? She likes you. Maybe you can make her see some sense."
    "Say, Fae! What do you think!" cried another friend. "Helen Doremus says we're too old to be in a play that has dolls in it. Isn't she silly? The dolls aren't going to be in all the stockings, only the little ones. And anyway, I told her it was too late for her to begin to find fault. But she says she's not coming to the play unless they leave the dolls out of all the stockings. Someone might misunderstand."
    "Yes, but you haven't heard the worst one yet, Fae," called her special friend, Ruby Holbrook. "Mae Phantom wants to be a fairy with a sparkling wand and silver shoes, and she's written some poetry to recite while she goes around looking at the stockings before we wake up. Isn't that the limit? If Miss Jenkins stands for that, I'm going to quit. I won't have her messing in our play. She hasn't been in our school long enough to go bossing things like that."
    "Say, Fae," said the youngest girl of all,