“Nancy!”
“This is the key of my heart. Keep it always, my darling,” he read in an awed voice.
“With this key you unlocked my heart,” she read in equal awe.
They wished each other a merry Christmas, and with their eyes they vowed eternal love, those unlocked hearts too full for words, while Letizia blew such a resounding alarum on her trumpet that she fetched up Mrs. Pottage.
“Well now, fancy that! I heard her right downstairs in the kitchen. Well, it’s real Christmas weather, and no mistake. Good morning, my beauty, and how are you?”
This to Letizia.
“Mrs. Porridge, Santy Claus brought me a dog and a lamb and a monkey and a rub-a-dub-dub and a wheedle-wheedle and a trumpet and a book and an orange and an apple and some sweeties and fousands of fings. And he came down the chiminy, and I wasn’t a bit frightened.”
Mrs. Pottage shook her head in delighted admiration.
“Did he come down head first or feet first?”
“Bofe,” Letizia declared, after a moment’s pause.