"It looks as though we were going to have something delicious," said Elizabeth daintily; and she peeped under a napkin, adding with disappointment: "O dear! I am afraid it is going to be fruit!"
Even as she spoke there was a knock on the door as though something had been delayed, and the door was reopened far enough to admit the maternal hand grasping the handle of a massive old fruit basket piled with apples. There was a rush to the door, and another protest: "Only apples, and there are barrels of them in the cellar: why not potatoes and be done with it! Entertain one's company on apples!" But the door was closed firmly, and thus the situation appeared to settle down for the rest of the afternoon.
It soon having become a problem of whether the apples should go to the children or the children go to the apples, Elizabeth decided that it should be solved in the human way; and she led the group back to the table under guidance of Elsie's eyes, which more than once had turned in that direction with a delicate, not to say indelicate, suggestion.
"I suppose it is better than starving," she remarked apologetically, adjusting her glasses in order to find the next best apple for Herbert after Harold had given the best to Elsie, and as she peeled her apple, she added with some instinct of regret that she was offering her guests refreshments so meagre:—
"How much better turkey and plum pudding sound in the old Christmas stories than they are when you have them!"
Elsie did not agree with this view. "I think it is much better to have them," she said.
"But in your mind's eye—" pleaded Elizabeth.
"I don't know so well about that eye!" said Elsie.
"Oh, but, Elsie," insisted Elizabeth with a rising enthusiasm, "in Dickens' Christmas Carol wouldn't you rather the big prize turkey were whirled away in the cab to the Bob Cratchits?"
"I must say that I should not," contended Elsie.