"'Twouldn't be any use, you'd be just as stupid," she said with a sigh. "Well, Matthew's our biggest boy, ain't he?"
"Yes," said Luke, "he is."
"Well, an' so this coat an' tippet's meant for him," said Elvira, composedly, and drawing her cold fingers well up within the thick sleeves.
"That coat for Matthew!" cried Luke, slipping off from his snowy perch; "an' that tippet, too!" With that he lost his head completely, and, getting entangled in the ragged fringe of the shawl, over he went, rolling down against the frozen pump.
Meantime the heads of all the children remaining in the old kitchen, except that of Susan, who had squirmed out of her mother's lap to the delight of her paper-chewing again, were pushed tight up over Matthew's shoulder, as he laboriously spelled out a letter found in the midst of the bundle-opening.
"'Mrs. Hansell'—that's Mother," explained Matthew.
"Yes, yes, we know," said Matilda, scornfully; "go on."
"Well, stop pinching me," demanded Matthew, dropping his hand with the letter in his lap to turn a pair of indignant black eyes upon her.
"I didn't," said Matilda, but she ducked nevertheless; "it was Jane."
"Oh, what a story; I didn't neither," said Jane, with round eyes at her.