“I have mince-pies and turkey for to-morrow!” was the curt reply. “I knew you would not be satisfied unless you had as good a dinner as your neighbors. But as for dough-nuts—they are oily, rank, indigestible abominations, fit only for an ostrich’s stomach, and one doesn’t get the smell of the hot fat out of the house in two weeks after they have been cooked. I never mean to make another while I live.”
Two pairs of sorrowful eyes stole a glance of mutual pity at one another, when this announcement was made; two pairs of cherry lips took a piteous curl, for a second; two curly heads bent lower over the plates set before their owners.
Not that there was any dearth of sweet things in the Dryden larder, or that Ally and Nettie, the proprietors of the eyes, lips, and heads aforesaid, were gormandizers. But this matter of frying doughnuts was great fun to them, as it is to most other small people who have ever been permitted to stand by and see the rings, leaves, birds, circles, triangles, and the endless variety of nondescript figures leave the kneading-board pale, flat surfaces of soft dough, and, upon being thrown into the bubbling fat, sinking, like leaden shapes, with a tremendous splutter and “fizz,” arise slowly and majestically to the top of the caldron, as Mr. Weller has it, “swelling wisibly” before the enraptured eye into puffy, crisp, toothsome morsels, fit, in the estimation of the juvenile partakers thereof, for a queen’s luncheon. Last year, the brother and sister had spent Christmas week with an aunt in another town. This lady being the indulgent mamma of half a dozen boys and girls, enjoyed nothing so much as making them merry and happy. The six days passed in her abode lived in the memory of nephew and niece as a dream of Paradisaical delight. But, this season, the holidays were to be kept at home, and the prospect was, to say the least, not eminently flattering.
Mr. and Mrs. Dryden were estimable people in their way, but they had studied to render themselves intensely and purely matter-of-fact. They prided themselves secretly upon growing wiser and more practical—less poetical—each revolving cycle. Each year, life assumed a more positive and less romantic aspect; their own duties seemed more momentous and imperative; the things which others call recreation and innocent amusements were puerile and unworthy. Mr. Dryden was making money; Mrs. Dryden was a notable housekeeper, and, so far as the physical needs of the children were concerned, a careful mother. Four little ones, three boys and a girl, claimed her love and maternal offices. Allison, the eldest, was eight years old; Nettie, six; and a pair of twin babies were in their third winter. The mother’s hands were certainly full, however admirable might be her faculty of accomplishing with speed the work set for her to do. It was not surprising that she should sometimes wear a haggard, anxious look, or that, now and then, she should be, as she now expressed it, “worried out of her senses.”
“I don’t see, for my part,” she broke forth, impatiently, presently, “how people find time or have the heart to frolic and observe holidays and the like frivolous carryings-on! With me, it is work, work, work! from morning until night, and from one year’s end to another. It frets me to see grown-up men and women, who ought to know something about the cares and solemn responsibilities of life, acting like silly children. What is Christmas more than any other time—when one takes a sober, common-sense view of the matter?”
“That is what nobody does in this age of nonsense and dissipation,” returned her husband. “I don’t know what the world is coming to!”
“Wasn’t our Saviour born on Christmas-day, Mamma?” asked Nettie’s timid voice.
“That is not certain, by any means, child. And if it were true, there is all the more scandal in making a frolic of it. If there were to be prayer-meetings held all over the world to celebrate the event, it would be far more appropriate.”
The polysyllable staggered Nettie a little, but she retained sufficient courage to reply: “Our teacher told us, last Sabbath, that everybody ought to be very happy upon the Saviour’s birthday.”
Before Mrs. Dryden could answer, Ally put in his oar.