"Oh! Mrs. Dana! have not they seen their tree? What suspense for the dear creatures!"
"It was their wish; and their father would not consent that the door should be unlocked until the family were assembled."
"Here is the last straggler!" exclaimed Lynn, springing into the group, shaking hands with his friends, and kissing the children. "We are all here!"
At a given signal, the door of the mysterious room was unfolded, and revealed the tree; its precious load glittering and gay in the clear winter day. Headed by "papa," and closed by the nurse and baby, the procession performed a circuit, and then formed a ring. Uncle Charley was distributor; accompanying each gift by an appropriate remark. For Ida, there were a pair of ear-rings from John Dana; a bracelet of fair hair, which did not require the simple "Carry" upon the chased clasp, to signify from whose brow it had been shorn; a handsomely-bound edition of Shelly's works—Lynn's taste; Charley gave a card case, a Chinese curiosity, and evaded her thanks and praises by pointing out a resemblance in the most grotesque figure, carved thereupon, to himself, a circumstance, which he protested, induced him to select it. Among the white buds of a perpetual rose-tree, hung a card—"Elle and Charley to their dear cousin;" and Mrs. Dana finished the list with a rose-wood work-box, supplied with every implement of female industry.
"Is this being friendless?" asked Ida, inly, looking at her acquisitions. "For the rest of the day, I will be grateful and contented."
The morning was spent in the nursery. On Christmas day, its door could not bar intruders; there were no men or women; all were children, Charley whipped his namesake's top; rocked the cradle; and instructed Elle in domestic economy, as he helped arrange her baby-house. The dinner-bell, rung an hour earlier than usual, on account of the wee ones taking that meal with the "big folks," was faintly heard in the din of a famous game of romps. The afternoon was less noisy; the children fell asleep, wearied with frolic; the gentlemen walked out; Mrs. Dana was busy; and so it was, that Ida sat alone in the drawing-room, at nightfall, watching the passing of the pink light from the clouds, and thinking—"Everything to gladden me, and yet ill at ease! murmuring soul, be still!" And then she wished for the society of a calmer mind, that should speak peace to the heavings of her unquiet spirit; for the comprehensive charity, the benign philosophy, which hoped for the best, and argued for the right—this was her version of the outgoing of the woman's heart—"Would he were here!"
But Elle's friends came early, and she had no time for higher thoughts than filling small mouths with bread and butter—"run-the-thimble," the vexed question of "how many miles to Babylon;" and "Chicken-me-chicken-me-craney-crow;" pastimes, whoso barbarous names cause the refined juveniles of this precocious '54, to join their gloved hands in thanksgiving, that their lot was not cast in those times! As the dignified master of the house deigned to participate in the ceremonies, we trust our heroine will not suffer a very grievous letting-down in the opinion of these formidable critics, for the prominent parts she assumed. A circle was ordered for "Fox and goose." Charley played Reynard, and Ida, goose the first. The children enjoyed, without fully understanding the game, and she had to keep the character longer than the laws prescribed. Round and round they flew—circling and doubling—the spectators screaming their applause—and she ran directly against a gentlemen who was entering. Her impetus was such that she would have fallen, but for his extended arm. A laughing voice said something, unintelligible in her confusion.
"Oh! Mr. Lacy!" cried Elle. "I was so afraid you wouldn't come!"
"I promised—did I not?" said he, stooping to kiss her.