I wish I could tell you what they left at each house, and how sometimes they looked in at the windows and watched them undo the parcels; and how Mrs. Harte was in the front room alone, fastening three bits of candle, half a dozen cornballs, as many tiny bags of candy, and one or two penny picture-books to the scrawniest little bush, and how, when she left the room a minute, Uncle Thed raised the loose sash, dropped the big bundle under the bit of pine, and hurried away as fast as he could; how Tod begged to hang the basket on Molly Dinah’s door, and how the infirm old latch suddenly uncaught, and the roast chicken, round yellow apples, Tod, and two mince pies rolled in all together, and how Molly Dinah laughed and hugged him, and then sat down and cried over the merino dress Sue handed her; how the little Mullins clapped their hands when Jack cut the string of the big brown-paper parcel; and how they saw Abby Flynn’s mother, after she had filled the two little stockings hung beside the old cracked stove with the toys she found in the bundle of bright plaids and nice warm flannel, go softly into the little bedroom and kneel down beside the bed on which the children lay fast asleep.
“Oh, it has been so much better than pearl rings!” said Sue, when the horses’ heads were at last turned homeward.
“Wait till other folks show you their things, and you haven’t got nothing much yourself,” sighed Maybee. “I ’xpect to feel miser’ble then.”
“You couldn’t feel miserable if you should try,” said Dick. “Seems as if this was the first real Christmas I ever had.”
“I don’t envy Bell the least bit,” said Jenny, as they passed the brilliantly-lighted house.
“There’ll be something miser’ble, even to a party,” said Maybee, brightening. “If it isn’t anything else, it’ll be the fruit-cake; the molasses or something’ll make you, oh, just as sick! when you’ve most pretty near ate enough. But then, I s’pose the miser’ble times run along between the good ones same’s the mud and mire down to the marsh, and we’d better jump right over and never mind.”
“Then the good times are stepping-stones,” added Sue. “So much better than a plank walk, you know Tod said.”
“Hasn’t this been a bouncer?” laughed Dick. “I wonder how Bill likes his skates and the other fixings. I wish Rob could have come with us, but Nettie wouldn’t hear a word to it.”
“I know that money Rob gave me was some his grandfather sent him to buy a pistol with,” said Will. “Rob asked if I thought it would be any like a ‘thank-offering.’ We boys have enough to be thankful for this year, without any presents.”
“Not forgetting the Gift for which none of us can ever be thankful enough,” rejoined Uncle Thed. “Beside that, all temporal blessings and deliverances are as nothing,—God’s best Gift to dying men, the Lord Jesus Christ, a saving knowledge of whom makes the only ‘real Christmas.’ Suppose we sing one verse of our Christmas Carol.”