“Don't drink it, dear,” she whispered to Betty, as the girl took her glass; “it will give you a vulgar colour.”
Betty turned upon her the smile of beaming affection with which she always regarded her family. She was standing under the mistletoe in her light blue cloak and hood bordered with swan's-down, and her eyes shone like lamps in the bright pallor of her face.
“Why, it is delicious!” she said, with the pretty effusion the old man loved. “It is better than my eggnog, isn't it, papa?”
“If anything can be better than your eggnog, my dear,” replied the Governor, courteously, “it is the Major's apple toddy.” The Major bowed, and Betty gave a merry little nod. “If you hadn't put it so nicely, I should never have forgiven you,” she laughed; “but he always puts it nicely, Major, doesn't he? I made him the other day a plum pudding of my very own,—I wouldn't even let Aunt Floretta seed the raisins,—and when it came on burnt, what do you think he said? Why, I asked him how he liked it, and he thought for a minute and replied, 'My dear, it's the very best burnt plum pudding I ever ate.' Now wasn't that dear of him?”
“Ah, but you should have heard how he put things when he was in politics,” said the Major, refilling his glass. “On my word, he could make the truth sound sweeter than most men could make a lie.”
“Come, come, Major,” protested the Governor. “Julia, can't you induce our good friend to forbear?”
“He knows I like to hear it,” said Mrs. Ambler, turning from a discussion of her Christmas dinner with Mrs. Lightfoot.
“Then you shall hear it, madam,” declared the Major, “and I may as well say at once that if the Governor hasn't told you about the reply he made to Plaintain Dudley when he asked him for his political influence, you haven't the kind of husband, ma'am, that Molly Lightfoot has got. Keep a secret from Molly! Why, I'd as soon try to keep a keg full of brandy from following an auger.”
“Auger, indeed!” exclaimed the little old lady, to whom the Major's facetiousness was the only serious thing about him. “Your secrets are like apples, sir, that hang to every passer-by, until I store them away. Auger, indeed!”
“No offence, my dear,” was the Major's meek apology. “An auger is a very useful implement, eh, Governor; and it's Plaintain Dudley, after all, that we're concerned with. Do you remember Plaintain, Mrs. Ambler, a big ruddy fellow, with ruffled shirts? Oh, he prided himself on his shirts, did Plaintain!”