So Emily was left to her surprises, and now, on the afternoon of the night before Christmas, we find Dorothy and Mabel, with Ned, Nat and Ted, busy with the decorations of the Cedars. Step ladders knocked each other down, as the enthusiastic boys tried to shift more than one to exactly the same spot in the long library. Kitchen chairs toppled over just as Dorothy or Mabel jumped to save their slippered feet, and the long strings of evergreens, with which all hands were struggling, made the room a thing of terror for Mrs. White and Major Dale.
The scheme was to run the greens in a perfect network across the beamed ceiling, not in the usual “chandelier-corner” fashion, but latticed after the style of the Spanish serenade legend.
At intervals little red paper bells dangled, and a prettier idea for decoration could scarcely be conceived. To say that Dorothy had invented it would not do justice to Mabel, but however that may be, all credit, except stepladder episodes, was accorded the girls.
“Let me hang the big bell,” begged Ted, “if there is one thing I have longed for all my life it was that—to hang a big ‘belle’.”
He aimed his stepladder for the middle of the room, but Nat held the bell.
“She’s my belle,” insisted Nat, “and she’s not going to be hanged—she’ll be hung first,” and he caressed the paper ornament.
“If you boys do not hurry we will never get done,” Dorothy reminded them. “It’s almost dark now.”
“Almost, but not quite,” teased Ted. “Dorothy, between this and dark, there are more things to happen than would fill a hundred stockings. By the way, where do we hang the hose?”
“We don’t,” she replied. “Stockings are picturesque in a kitchen, but absurd in such a bower as this.”
“Right, Coz,” agreed Ned, deliberately sitting down with a wreath of greens about his neck. “Cut out the laundry, ma would not pay my little red chop-suey menu last week, and I may have to wear a kerchief on Yule day.”