“I love my autoharp better than anything in the world,” he declared, dangling the small pasteboard disc by its red cord. “Even, even, better than Abraham Lincoln!” he cried. “Thank you so much, mother dear!”
“And that Lockhart’s Life!” echoed Haze, as enthusiastically as if he expected to sit down to the first volume next minute. “U-m-m!!”
“I hope I have not only succeeded in making you dissatisfied, my poor lambs,” said mother, a little anxiously.
“Dissatisfied!” cried Ernie, striking out in fine skating style for the piano. “Do you think it’s a brood of ungrateful brutes you’ve hatched into the wor-rld, mum? Let’s have some carols now. I want to shout!”
And so we did! Hazard quite off the tune, as usual, Robin piping away in his gay little treble, Ernie and I trying our best to keep the others up to time.
It was all very jolly; and, as I said when I first sat down to write, we simply could not have passed a lovelier Christmas, no matter how much money we might have spent,—now do you think we could?
Thursday, January 1.
We sat up last night to watch the New Year in,—Haze, Geof, Ernie, and I. The workshop was cold, and we missed the flying-machine.
“I do not believe,” declared Ernie, dejectedly, “that Resolutions do a bit of good. I have made the same four regularly for the last two years. I’ve written them out in red ink on a slip of paper, and kept them in my Bible;—and nobody seems to find me any nicer!”
“Perhaps they were not the right kind,” hazarded Geof. “A good deal depends upon what one resolves, I suppose.”