“You are very welcome, dear child,” was the kindly response, “and I hope you and my little Mary will have many a pleasant time together while you are living so near us.”
“Thank you, ma’am; I hope so, too,” returned Ethel gratefully, then hurried away with her little brother and sisters.
Mrs. Coote met them at the parsonage door. “Go right up to your room and to bed everyone of you,” she said, and they silently obeyed.
“Strange that their uncles didn’t send some Christmas remembrance to the children,” remarked Mr. Coote to his wife as they sat together at the tea table.
“Possibly they may have thought they had enough to do in providing for their own, and that you and I might find some little thing for those you promised to treat as if they were your own,” she rejoined in a slightly sarcastic tone.
“Humph! we’re not in circumstances to do much for our own if we had ’em,” he sniffed angrily; “so I don’t consider myself pledged to do anything of the kind.”
“And the children didn’t expect it, I’m sure; nobody would ever mistake you for a Santa Claus,” she returned with a not particularly pleasant laugh.
He colored and flashed an angry look at her, but let the remark pass in silence. Neither then nor afterward did his wife let him know of the Christmas box sent to the children. She had given them only a part of the sweets that day, but they received the rest in small instalments till all were gone.
So long as the weather was pleasant a part of nearly every day was spent at the house of their kind neighbors, but when it stormed their only refuge for the greater part of the time was the small room appropriated to them over the kitchen in their temporary home. It was hard for all, but especially for Harry and Nannette, to be so constantly confined to such close quarters, and Ethel could not always keep them quiet; they sometimes played noisily, at others fretted and cried aloud because they were so tired of staying in that little room where there was so small space for running and romping.
Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Coote would tolerate such noise, and again and again the hearts of Ethel and Blanche were made to ache by the sore punishment meted out to the little brother and sister. And sometimes they themselves were in disgrace and severely dealt with for failures in their tasks, or anger or too much sympathy shown the other two when they were punished.