After all the gaiety of Christmas week it wasn't the easiest thing in the world for the girls to settle down to work at school. There were so many things to talk over, there was so much to think about. Christmas day itself had been very pleasant for Julia, though it had been kept by her uncle and aunt strictly as a family festival. She and Brenda were the youngest of the group gathered at the table, for Brenda's elder sister was still in Europe, and the other cousins invited to the dinner were all older than Julia and Brenda. The presents were given unostentatiously at breakfast before the arrival of any outside of the household, and Julia was touched to find that she had been remembered not only by the relatives whom she had seen, but by the absent cousins in Europe who had known her only when she was a very little girl. Brenda in her turn was extremely surprised by the handsome gifts which Julia gave to her and to her father and mother. There was the beautiful bracelet which she had been longing for as she had seen it in a Winter street window, with the tiny watch set near the clasp, while for her father and mother was a large paper edition of Thackeray, finely illustrated and elegantly bound. Brenda was too heedless of money herself to stop to count the cost of these gifts, and yet she realized that they must be expensive, and while thanking Julia with the greatest warmth, she wondered how in the world she had been able to afford them.