"What do you do?" Phebe demanded.
"Why, we give presents at breakfast; that's all. Of course it will be different, this year. Papa was here, last Christmas. He gave me my watch then."
"Oh!" Phebe became round-eyed with admiration. "Did he give you that? I should think you would miss him."
Hope came to the rescue.
"It will be lonely, this year. I remember how it was, after mamma died. We didn't want to have any Christmas; but papa said she would rather we kept up the old ways, so we did just as we always had done."
"I wish we did things the way you do." Billy pushed his hair impatiently away from his face. "You don't know how it seems to a fellow to be alone. It is no sort of fun."
"Adopt us," Theodora suggested, laughing.
Billy flashed at her a swift glance which told, plainly as words, how gladly he would carry out her suggestion.
Passing through the hall, Mrs. McAlister had heard the children's talk. A little later, she knocked at the door of her husband's office. The doctor pushed aside the sheets of the essay he was writing for a medical journal, and rose to greet his wife.
"Well, Bess, the sanctum is glad to see you."