The four little Blossoms ploughed home through the snow and that afternoon they were very busy, tying up packages in tissue paper and writing names on the pretty tags and seals Mother Blossom gave them. Mother Blossom herself was busy doing up Christmas gifts to mail and she had a whole sledful for the children to take to the post-office late that afternoon. Among the parcels were several for Aunt Polly and one for Jud and another for Linda who lived with Aunt Polly at Brookside Farm.
Tuesday would be Christmas, and Monday morning Uncle Dave and Aunt Miranda came. The four little Blossoms went with Father Blossom in the car to the station to meet them. Meg and Bobby had seen them once, when Bobby was three years old and Meg two, but, of course, they did not remember them clearly.
“Well, well, well,” said Uncle Dave, when he saw the children almost tumbling out of the car to greet him. “So these are the four little Blossoms, eh? What goes round and round and never touches the sky or ground?”
“What does?” asked Dot who loved riddles.
“You do,” said Uncle Dave kissing her. “You haven’t had your feet on the ground two minutes since I first caught sight of you.”
Uncle Dave was a rather tall old man, with slightly stooped shoulders and eyes that twinkled whenever he looked at anyone. He wore a soft felt hat with a high crown and a narrow, curving brim. Out of the pocket of his overcoat peeped a corncob pipe. Uncle Dave was very fond of his old cob pipe, the children soon discovered.
Aunt Miranda was a tiny little old lady with snow white hair and snapping black eyes. She was so muffled up in shawls and scarfs and capes that no one realized how tiny she was till she was all “unwound,” as Bobby said. The first thing she did when they had reached the house and she had kissed Mother Blossom, was to put on a black silk apron and take her knitting out of the pocket. And during her visit no one ever saw Aunt Miranda without her knitting. She did not believe in idle hands.
The four little Blossoms always trimmed their own Christmas tree, and right after lunch they went to work. Uncle Dave insisted on helping and he was so tall and had such long arms that he was every bit as good as a step-ladder. How he laughed when Twaddles, watching him admiringly, told him this.
“I must tell Aunt Miranda that,” he chuckled. “She always says I put things out of her reach. She is so short that what I put away on the closet shelves, she has to stand on a chair to get down.”
The tree looked beautiful when it was all trimmed. Meg and Dot had strung the ropes of popcorn and the cranberries and Bobby and Uncle Dave had put on the gold and silver ornaments which were carefully saved from year to year. Twaddles always claimed the right to sprinkle the white cotton and mica on for the snow, and just before dinner Father Blossom put the star at the top of the tree and Sam Layton came in to fix the electric lights. Norah had baked the gingerbread men which hung from the branches, and Mother Blossom and Aunt Miranda had made the candied apples on sticks which helped to trim the tree. All the Blossom family had a hand in getting the tree ready, you see, which was one reason, perhaps, they always loved to have one.