"We 're to have supper right away. Your grandmother calls it supper, and Cook calls it dinner."
"Cook!"
"She 's here."
"Well, of all the----"
But Peter had to be hurried away by his sister Nancy to his room--his old room upstairs under the eaves, where he found his hand-bag awaiting him, and a brisk fire snapping in the old box stove. For the time being, he felt he could let himself forget that the old roof was encumbered by a heavy mortgage, due in six weeks now, and held by a man who had long coveted that farm. It was Christmas.
The meal spread in the long, low dining-room, to which a merry company presently sat down, was a delicious one. Grandmother Bell's old blue-and-white Canton plates and cups had never been more delectably filled, nor had her antique silver forks and spoons clinked to a livelier measure than the talk and laughter which went round as the supper proceeded.
"Does it seem like home here?" Shirley asked Mr. Joseph Bell.
"Home?" said he, with a glance from the old prints upon the walls to the antique side table below, with its turned-up leaf. "It's the only place in the world that will ever really seem like home to me. It 's just a makeshift, living in the city, to people who were brought up on a place like this. You see, though I went away from here when I was a young man, and lived a long time in the city, working up in the paper factory, we came back here again and stayed five years, while the children were little, on account of a breakdown in my health. Then when I grew strong again, we moved back and settled in Gay Street. But the farm is home--always will be. My wife feels the same way, though she was a city girl. She 'd like to live here now as much as ever."
"I don't wonder. It's one of the pleasantest farm-houses I ever saw." And Shirley smiled across the table at Peter as she spoke, meeting his eyes as he glanced from his father's face to hers, well pleased to see the elder man looking as if heartily enjoying himself.
"The tree is only to look at this evening," announced Jane, when they were all back in the living-room. "Nothing is to be taken off it till to-morrow evening."