“I’d love to be named Mary Lavinia,” quoth Kit over her shoulder. “How can anybody be staid and faithful unto death with ‘Kit’ hurled at them all day. But if I had been rightly called Mary Lavinia, oh, Cousin Beth, I’d have been a darling.”
“I don’t doubt it one bit,” laughed Cousin Beth merrily. “Go along with you, Kit. It just suits you.”
Doris sat on her favorite hassock clasping a new baby doll in her arms with an expression of utter contentment on her face. Kit and Jean had dressed it in the evenings after she had gone to bed, and it had a complete layette. But Billie had given her his tame crow, Moki, and her responsibility was divided.
“Where’d you get the name from, Billie?” she asked.
Billie stroked the smooth glossy back of the crow as one might a pet chicken.
“I found him one day over in the pine woods on the hill. He was just a little fellow then. The nest was in a dead pine, and somebody’d shot it all to pieces. The rest of the family had gone, but I found him fluttering around on the ground, scared to death with a broken wing. Ben helped me fix it, and he told me to call him Moki. You know he’s read everything, and he can talk some Indian, Pequod mostly, he says. He isn’t sure but what there may be some Pequod in him way back, he can talk it so well, and Moki means ‘Watch out’ in Pequod, Ben says. I call him that because I used to put him on my shoulder and he’d go anywhere with me through the woods, and call out when he thought I was in danger.”
“How do you know what he thought?”
“After you get acquainted with him, you’ll know what he thinks too,” answered Billie soberly. “Hush, grandfather’s going to say something.”
The Judge rose and stood on the hearth rug, his back to the fire. He was nearly six feet tall, soldierly, and rugged, his white curly hair standing out in three distinct tufts just like Pantaloon, Kit always declared, his eyes keen and bright under their thick brows. He had taken off his eyeglasses and held them in one hand, tapping them on the other to emphasize his words. Jean tiptoed around the tree, extinguishing the last sputtering candles, and sat down softly beside Cousin Roxy.
“I don’t think any of you, beloved children and dear ones, can quite understand what tonight means to me personally.” He cleared his throat and looked over at Billie. “I haven’t had a real Christmas here since Billie’s father was a little boy. I didn’t want a real Christmas either. Christmas meant no more to me than to some old owl up in the woods, maybe not as much. But tonight has warmed my heart, built up a good old fire in it just as you start one going in some old disused rock fireplace that has been stone cold for years.