"What color is the one you have for me?" Florence asked.
"It's white, an' it sumpsin to wipe your nose on. Now, I won't tell you one sing more," and she pursed up her lips tight, looking very wise while the others laughed heartily but pretended to be much mystified. These were very mysterious times, anyhow. Some one was always skurrying something under a chair or poking something into a closet whenever certain persons entered the room, and there were unfamiliar snippings of lace and silk and cambric to be seen on the floor in the nursery, so that Florence was wrought up to a pitch of curiosity rather unusual for her.
"You are to come over here right after breakfast, Christmas morning," she told Eleanor; "you and Rock. I wish you could stay here all night so that we could hang up our stockings together. I do so wish you could."
Eleanor looked a little doubtful; she did not want to neglect her Aunt Dora and her Uncle Heath, not to mention Rock. "I am afraid I couldn't do that," she said. "You know Rock will be at home and it would seem mean to leave them all on Christmas morning."
"Rock could come too; it would be such fun to have you," continued Florence, all hospitality, but Eleanor declared that would never do, and so they had to give up the plan. But, after all, it did turn out that Eleanor spent Christmas eve with her cousins, for Florence's mother decided that the children should have their Christmas tree at that time, that they might all go to Mrs. Heath Dallas' on Christmas night and see the tree that was to be prepared for Rock and Eleanor.
"Aunt Dora won't tell me anything about the tree," Eleanor told Florence, "so there's some sort of surprise, I know. Isn't it just fine that we can all be here together? I should have been so miserable at home."
"I don't see how you could have stood Cousin Ellen and have been nice to her," said Florence.
Eleanor was silent for a moment and took several stitches in the doily she was embroidering in outline stitch for her Aunt Nellie. "Well, I wasn't very nice to her," she admitted after a time. "I meant to be in the beginning, but when Don was so hateful and they treated Bubbles so mean, I just didn't care and I said anything that came into my head. Sometimes, when I got real mad, I was the sauciest girl you ever heard."
"Are you going to tell your mother?" Florence asked solemnly.
"I—I don't know. Maybe. Yes, I always tell mamma everything; somehow, it comes out whether I want it to or not. Yes, I'll tell her, but I couldn't be meek and lowly; I just couldn't. I never knew I could feel so very, very mad at any one before, but, you see, now that I am not there, I don't feel so mad, and I'm going to send the Christmas gifts, you know. I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll write to Cousin Ellen, and tell her I am sorry I was saucy, but I'll not say I am sorry about Donald, for I'm not." And Florence agreed that she could hardly be expected to.