CHAPTER XII
WELCOME HODGKINS CHOOSES THE CHRISTMAS TREE
It isn't so easy as you might think to choose a Christmas tree. Many a day early as November the seven little Mulvaneys trooped forth in search of one. The woods belonged to Mr. Hodgkins, who by this time had become their much loved ideal. Even Cornelia Mary had changed her mind about the man.
"He doesn't seem half so queer when you really get acquainted with him," she often remarked to her mother. Mrs. Brown and Sally were delighted by the many acts of kindness he showered upon the Mulvaneys, and their friends the Turners began to like him.
It so happened that the reason the seven children were so careful in their choice of a tree, was because Mr. Hodgkins, the Randalls, the Turners, Mrs. Brown, Alfred and Sally were to share in its joy. The idea of having a Christmas tree was suggested by Mrs. Mulvaney to the unbounded satisfaction of the children.
"Who'll speak the pieces and sing the songs?" demanded Chinky.
"All of us, of course," Hannah replied.
"Catch me speaking a piece to a tree!" sniffed Chinky. "Johnnie and Mike and Stubbins, they can do that."
"Think you're awful smart, don't you?" began Mike, but his mother cut him short with her slipper.
Johnnie was the boy who best knew how easily that slipper came off and should have known better than to laugh at Mike.
"I'll paddle you next," warned Mrs. Mulvaney. "You think you're so cunning. Be quiet, children, and we'll settle about how things is to be done Christmas Eve. We'll have the speaking and the singing first, that being the way it was fixed at the Christmas tree you all went to at the church last year, though land's sake that seems ten years ago, times has changed so much.