And then the making up of the baskets in the evening! Grandmother insisted that one sleigh would never carry them all.
“Every part of Christmas seems the nicest,” Blue Bonnet had sighed, happily, filling a bag with nuts and raisins for the small Pattersons, and almost envying Luella Patterson the brown-eyed, brown-haired doll lying smiling up at her from its box.
Nor had this “between-time” Sunday lacked its own particular charm. “It gives one a little chance to get one’s breath,” Blue Bonnet confided to Solomon, curled up in the chair beside her, “Though it hasn’t been what one would call precisely an idle day! But I’ve got everything ready—think of that, Solomon! All the home things packed away in the closet, and after supper, Uncle Cliff and I are going to take Alec’s and the ‘We are Seven’ theirs. Think what a lot of presents I’ve had to wrap up and write on!”
Solomon wriggled appreciatively; there was something for him,—he had been told so.
While out in the hall stood a big, travel-stained box, object of Solomon’s liveliest curiosity. It had arrived the day before from Texas.
“Don’t you want to come sing this, Blue Bonnet?” Aunt Lucinda asked; and as Blue Bonnet came to the piano, she struck the opening chords of Mrs. Clyde’s favorite carol: “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
Blue Bonnet sang it all, looking out to where above the familiar street the silent stars went by, and trying to picture to herself the little hillside town of Bethlehem, resting in its quiet sleep.
“‘O holy Child of Bethlehem!
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in,