"Why, it must be that we're to set the table ourselves," cried Ruth, as she started to undo the cloth and shove it along.
"Here you give that to me, will you?" said Samuel, with a tone of authority any commanding officer in the army or navy might envy. Then he took one end of it, and Elizabeth the other, and they spread it carefully over the table.
Just then China came rattling into the room with the dishes. It was easy enough for him to get into the room; but it was quite another thing for him to move gracefully about the table, for China, you remember, was thin, long, and rather narrow. But he managed to get to the Judge, and drop a plate before him and the baby; and then he twisted around like a snake, and got down to the end of the table, and dropped a plate before Mrs. "Judge." Then he went from one child to another, and banged down a plate before each one of them. After this was done, China stepped back and stood by the side of Dublin, near the wall.
El Dorado came next. He brought the silver, and there was a fine display of it. Beautiful knives and forks and spoons for every person in the room, and ever so many little furnishings that helped to brighten the table. How these things rattled and jumped and rang as they were tumbled hither and thither into their rightful places. The children didn't have to move a hand or a finger to put them in order. Every knife, fork, spoon, salt-cellar, or other article seemed to know where to go, and got there in less time than one could say "Jack Robinson." Then the silver candlesticks from the mantle jumped over to the table, and took their places with a good deal of brightness and sprightliness.
At this point the antique sideboard stepped close up to the table, and rolled seventeen very thin cut-glass goblets upon the board. They made a right merry sound as they jingled out their Christmas greetings.
"Don't let the baby have a goblet!" shouted Ruth. "He'd bite a piece right out of it. That's what Elizabeth did when she was a baby, mother says. Isn't it a wonder she didn't die?" But everybody was watching this extraordinary way of setting the table, so that the child's remark fell unnoticed. There was a most lively and musical ringing of bells at this stage of the table setting. Turpentine came dancing into the room. Turpentine was the closet in the Judge's study that had been used to store the church-bells in. When the last wooden meeting-house had burned they took the old bell, which rang for the last time the sad alarm of fire on the memorable night, and they sent it away to be melted up and made into five hundred little bells. There were dinner-bells and tea-bells and call-bells and sleigh-bells and play-horse bells on lines, and I don't know how many other kinds. Nearly all of these had been sold, but thirty or forty remained in the closet. Turpentine came into the room playing with these, and rolled one down in front of each person at the table.
"How would you like to have the dinner served, Ruth?" inquired Mrs. "Judge."