But next morning he was glad that he was not living at the Junction, for he started to kindergarten, and a world of new interests opened up before him. Benjy came back to town that week, but he did not find quite the same tractable follower. Will'm had learned how to play with other boys, and how to make other boys do _his_ bidding, so he did not always allow Benjy to dictate. Still the leaven of an uneasy presence began working again, and worked on till it was suddenly counteracted by the coming of another Christmas season.
Both Libby and Will'm began to feel its approach when it was still a month off. They felt it in the mysterious thrills that began to stir the household as sap, rising in a tree, thrills it with stirrings of spring. There were secrets and whisperings. There was counting of pennies and planning of ways to earn more, for they were wiser about Christmas this year. They knew that there are three kinds of presents. There is the kind that Santa Claus puts into your stocking, just because he _is_ Santa Claus, and the Sky Road leads from his Kingdom of Giving straight to the kingdom of little hearts who love and believe in him.
Then there's the kind that you give to the people you love, just because you love them, and you put your name on those. And third, there's the kind that you give secretly, in the name of Santa Claus, just to help him out if he is extra busy and should happen to send you word that he needs your services.
Libby and Will'm received no such messages, being so small, but their father had one. He sent a load of coal and some rent money to a man who had lost a month's wages on account of sickness in his family, and it must have been a very happy and delightful feeling that Santa Claus gave their father for doing it, for his voice sounded that way afterward when he said, "After all, Molly, that's the best kind of giving. We ought to do more of it and less of the other."
When it came to the first kind of presents, neither Libby nor Will'm made a choice. They sent their names and addresses up the chimney so that the reindeer might be guided to the right roof-top, and left the rest to the generosity of the reindeer's wise master to surprise them as he saw fit. They were almost sure that the things they daily expressed a wish for would come by the way of the Christmas tree as the doll and the tricycle had the year before, "with the love of father and mother."