Mrs. Morton made Alice set a place for herself and share their family festival. Dr. Morton could scarcely finish saying grace before there was a general falling to at the parcels. For some reason Dr. Morton had a prejudice against Christmas trees, and it was always the family custom to have the gifts at the breakfast table.
Chicken Little waited just long enough to see Ernest’s face light up over the microscope before she pounced joyously upon her biggest parcel which certainly looked like a doll.
The rest of the family suspended operations to watch her as she lifted the lid of the box, her face aglow with anticipation. She gave one long satisfied look at the contents in perfect silence then voiced her delight in a series of little shrieks.
“Oh Mother!—it is! Oh, the darling!—and it can talk! I didn’t know it could talk! And see those red shoes—and isn’t that the dearest dress? Oh—Mother!” Chicken Little jumped up from her chair to fling herself on her mother’s neck in a grateful hug.
But there were more joys. One was a gold bracelet—from Frank and Marian. Alice had made a nightgown and a fascinating coat for Miss Dolly, and Ernest had bought a marvelous trunk for the young lady.
Ernest’s brackets proved to be really charming and the young workman was well repaid for his hours of toil by the general admiration. Mother and Father declared themselves delighted with Jane’s painfully wrought book-mark and penwiper, and Alice was more than happy over the substantial coat and the family’s gift to her in anticipation of her journey. For Alice was to go to Uncle Joseph’s. It had been arranged that she should leave soon after New Year’s.
Alice had another surprise later in the morning. A box of gloves arrived on top of which reposed the brown glove she had lost the preceding evening. No card was enclosed, but evidently none was needed for Alice blushed rosy red at sight of the brown glove and hugged the package close as she carried it upstairs.
“I wish Christmas came every day,” sighed Chicken Little happily as she tumbled into bed that night almost too tired to undress.
But no one wished it the next day. Everybody was tired and cross and found it hard to settle down to common daily duties after the prolonged Christmas excitement.
Chicken Little went over to see Katy and Gertie in the morning but promptly quarreled with Katy over the respective merits of their Christmas presents. Katy had some new coral beads with a gold clasp that she considered put Chicken Little’s bracelet entirely in the shade so Chicken Little gathered up her playthings and went home in high dudgeon, and had to nurse her wrath in lonely state till evening.