HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE WRITTEN.
"Ring out ye merry, merry bells,
Your loudest, sweetest chime;
Tell all the world, both rich and poor,
'Tis happy Christmas time."
"Grandmother," said Ralph, at breakfast on what Molly called "the morning of Christmas Eve," "I was going to ask you, only the story last night put it out of my head, if I might ask Prosper to spend to-morrow with us. His uncle and aunt are going away somewhere, and he will be quite alone. Besides he and I have made a plan about taking the shawl to the old woman quite early in the morning. You don't know how pleased he was when I told him you had got it for her, grandmother—just as pleased as if he had bought it for her with his own money."
"Then he is a really unselfish boy," said grandmother. "Certainly you may ask him. I had thought of it too, but somehow it went out of my head. And, as well as the shawl, I shall have something to send to Prosper's old friend. She must have a good dinner for once."
"That'll be awfully jolly," said Ralph. Sylvia and Molly listened with approval, for of course they had heard all about the mystery of Ralph's wood-carrying long ago.
"At Christmas time we're to try to make other people happy," said Molly, meditatively. "I thought of something that would make a great lot of people happy, if you and aunty would do it, grandmother dear?"
"I don't think you did all the thinking about it, Molly," said Sylvia, with a slight tone of reproach. "I do think I did some."
"Well, I daresay you did. We did it together. It couldn't be for this Christmas, but for another."
"But what is it?" asked grandmother.
"It is that you and aunty should make a book out of the stories you've told us, and then you see lots and lots of other children would be pleased as well as us," said Molly. "Of course you'd have to put more to it, to make it enough. I don't mind if you put some in about me, grandmother dear, if you would like to very much."
"No," said Sylvia, "that would be very stupid. Grandmother couldn't make a book about us. We're not uncommon enough. We couldn't be heroines, Molly."
"But children don't care about heroines," said Molly. "Children like to hear about other children, just really what they do. Now, don't they, grandmother dear? And isn't my plan a good one?"
Will you answer little Molly's question, children dear? For dear you all are, whoever and wherever you be. Boys and girls, big and little, dark and fair, brown-eyed and blue-eyed, merry and quiet—all of you, dear unknown friends whose faces I may never see, yet all of whom I love. I shall be so glad—so very glad, if this little simple story-book of mine helps to make this Christmas Day a happy and merry one for you all.
THE END.