“Get up, Father,” begged Ethel. “Get up and light the Christmas tree!”
“That room will be cold,” objected their mother. “Here, crawl under this blanket, all of you. Theodore, do poke up the fire.”
There were some embers left in the fireplace and he strode over, barefoot, in his night garb and jabbed and stirred at them, vigorously, piling on the wood till a roaring blaze was kindled. He liked fires to roar, horses to gallop, he had to put gusto into everything he did, his wife lay thinking.
“We’ll have breakfast first,” she said firmly. “No one will be downstairs this early, so all of you take your stockings and crawl back into your beds till Mame comes in. Then after breakfast we’ll light the Christmas trees in the gun room.”
“It’s cold in there too,” complained Ted, “cold as anything.”
“It’s cold everywhere. This is a winter’s day,” said Theodore. “Scamper now! No one is to stir out of bed again till Mame comes in.”
“She’s an awful sleepyhead,” complained Ethel. “She won’t stir for hours and hours.”
The gun room was not yet warm when at nine o’clock Theodore lighted the candles on the two Christmas trees, Mame standing by worriedly with a bucket of water and a dipper to head off any flickering blaze. She had wrapped each child in a heavy coat, but even that did not keep small fingers from cramping with cold as they fumbled with strings and wrappings, squealing happily over their treasures.
Ted gloated over a new sled while his mother wondered how it would be transported to Albany, for assuredly he would refuse to leave it behind. Ethel hugged a new doll and put it to bed repeatedly in its cradle her Aunt Bamie had sent, adjuring it to lie still now and Father would come and tell a story, maybe about cowboys.
At ten o’clock Roosevelt impulsively decided to go to church, and Alice and Ethel insisted on going with him. Wrapped in heavy coats they set out in the carriage, the girls with their chins buried in fur, their small noses pink with frost.