The boy pushed her away, and placed his eye at the small clear spot on the window-pane.
"Elizabeth," he said, squinting critically, "if this is the best spy-glass you have, you would make very little headway with the enemy."
"I didn't have to make headway with the enemy!" cried Elizabeth, rejecting his hostile utterance; "I merely wished to see my friends."
The boy kept his eye at the lookout.
"Elsie has on a red woollen helmet; and she looks as though she were dyed in gore. I wish it were old William's gore!"
The sight of those far-off figures dancing toward her had awaked in Elizabeth an ecstasy, and she began to weave light-footed measures of her own.
"Now I am perfectly happy," she sang, but rather to herself as she whirled round the room.
Her brother turned toward her and propped his back against the window and folded his arms: he looked like a dwarf who had been a major-general and was conscious of it.
"I'll not be happy until that key is found. I don't propose to be defeated."
"Oh, Harold, why can't we leave everything as it has always been, if they want it! If papa and mamma wish to have one more old-fashioned Christmas,—and you know it's the last,—if they wish to have one more, so do I and so do you!"