“What’s the matter with you?” laughed Sue, coming out on the piazza.
“Oh! it’s Tom and Jack. You know they don’t come to Sabbath School scarcely any, now, but they keep promising to, and just now, when I asked them, they were so awfully provoking. I don’t believe I’ll ever say another word to them.”
“We mustn’t forget it’s a fight for life,” said Sue, gently. “You see, I’ve been talking with mother about this very thing. I do so want Bell to be a Christian, and I get so discouraged. But mother says a soldier must not expect to win every battle with the first shot. Some places have to be besieged for months. And she says the very hardest kind of fighting is waiting patiently and bearing meekly, because it is then we get discouraged and give up trying. So I’m going to keep on praying for Bell and do everything I can. And we must remember how wild Tom has always been—”
“I’d better remember I was just as bad, and might not have been a bit better now if I hadn’t been shut right up there with Aunty McFane. Oh, how good she did use to talk!”
“Dear old aunty! Isn’t it nice to think of her up in heaven, all well and happy? Think what a Christmas she will have.”
“O me! I’d most forgot the miser’blest thing of all,” broke in Maybee, dolefully. “Uncle Thed isn’t going to have any Christmas tree. I heard him tell mamma so.”
“Not have any Christmas tree!” exclaimed Sue and Tod together.
“That is as you say,” said mamma, standing in the door. “He will leave it all to you. Come in to supper now and we will talk it over,—you, too, Dick, for if we decide on the new plan you may like to join us.”
They listened with wide-open eyes while she told them that, because of the hard times, a great many little boys and girls would have no Christmas at all, no presents, no dinner even; that what Uncle Thed’s annual Christmas party, tree, presents, supper and all cost would go a great ways towards making such children happy, and if they would agree to go without their nice presents, Uncle Thed would help them make out a list of names; they should decide on a present for each one, and Christmas Eve they could go around and leave the parcels on the doorsteps.
“Oh, oh! in a sleigh an’ eight tiny weindeer, just like St. Nicholas!” screamed Tod. “Won’t that be nice?”