Anything whatever to eat between the five o’clock P. M. supper and the seven o’clock A. M. breakfast was a forbidden luxury to the Sheldon children, for their good parents considered it altogether an unwholesome habit for little ones to give their stomachs work for the night. It was only adults, in their opinion, who might indulge themselves in rosy-cheeked apples, tempting nuts, or other dainties, in the long winter evenings, with impunity. To be sure, these little treats, seeming doubly delicious to the watering mouths of the children because forbidden them, were only brought forth after the clock had struck eight—the bed-hour of the youthful Sheldons, but, by some mysterious instinct which children often possess, they knew well enough the night custom of their elders, and were ambitious to grow up, that they, too, might not go to bed hungry.
For it was not seldom the case that they were, notwithstanding their hearty suppers of bread and milk, and such other food as was supposed to be harmless to the youthful digestion, really hungry before they fell to sleep.
Little Tot, however, had a special antipathy to hunger, either real or imaginary, and a similar love, as has been said, for secret nocturnal feasts. The other children being boys, Tot had a cunning little bed-room all to herself, and so could indulge her eccentric appetite without much fear of disturbance. To be sure, she often felt certain guilty qualms of conscience, when her mother would look into her room to kiss her good-night, and she feigned sleep, while clutching tightly her prize beneath her pillow. Crumbs of gingerbread or cracker would have betrayed her the next day, but Tot had been brought up to take care of her own mite of a room.
She wasn’t afraid of nightmares. Not Tot! She had eaten too many stolen suppers, and passed through the ordeal unharmed, to be afraid of any such bugbears, as she termed them. Neither of illness, for she considered her little stomach to be quite equal to that of any feather-bearing ostrich that ever stalked.
Sometimes it was a rosy baldwin or a brown russet apple, a juicy pear, or bit of cake, or even a “cent’s worth” of candy, that found its way to Tot’s chamber. But one night it was a whole pint of roasted chestnuts which her uncle Harry had given her as he met her coming from school, and which she had hoarded away, beneath the snowy sheets of her bed, till night.
For once Tot Sheldon was not unwilling to go to bed, a most remarkable occurrence. She said her good-nights with such cheerfulness, and started off with such alacrity that, unmindful of the many bed-times when the contrary had been true of her behavior, Mr. Sheldon said something, in a satisfied tone, about “the good effect of early training,” etc.
Chestnuts were Tot’s special delight,—and roasted chestnuts!
How she longed to get at them, that she might release the mealy meat, white and fine almost as flour, from the bursting brown shells, and revel in the peculiar, delicious flavor which she knew and loved so well!
Having undressed and ensconced herself in her cosey little bed, she waited with impatience for her mother’s nightly visit. She daren’t eat any of the nuts before, for fear something of the nutty aroma might be in her breath.
But she forgot that roasted chestnuts have a fragrance of their own, even while yet in their shells, and she trembled with fear least she should lose her treasures, when her mother, after kissing her, said kindly: