“Bless my soul!” he cried. “It’s close on to twelve o’clock! You children ought to be in bed—oughtn’t they, Mother?”
There was a murmur of laughter round the group, for John Fernald was looking at his wife over his spectacles in just the quizzical way his sons and daughters well remembered.
“I suppose they ought, John,” she responded, smiling at him. “But you might let them sit up a little longer—just this once.”
He looked them over once more—it was the hundredth time his eyes had gone round the circle that night. It was a goodly array of manhood and womanhood for a father to look at and call his own—even William Sewall, the brother of his son’s wife,
seemed to belong to him to-night. They gave him back his proud and tender glance, every one of them, and his heart was very full. As for their mother—but her eyes had gone down.
“Well,” he said, leaning over to clasp her hand in his own, as she sat next him, “I guess maybe, just this once, it won’t do any harm to let ’em stay up a little late, They’re getting pretty big, now.... And it’s Christmas Night.”
THE END
