Mr. Clyde, who was touched to his very heart's core by Hazel's gift of a dollar pair of suspenders which she had earned by her own labor, felt a small hand slipped into his, and found Cherry Bounce looking up at him with wide, adoring, brown eyes, which, for the first time, she had taken from her beautiful Émilie Angélique, whom she held pressed to her heart:--
"I want to whisper to you," she said, shyly. Mr. Clyde bent down to her;--"After I said my prayers to Martie, I asked God to give me Émilie Angélique--every night," she nodded--"but I only told Budd, so how did you know?"
March was lost to the world in his volume of foreign photographs, in his boxes of paints and brushes, and a whole set of drawing materials. He had not as yet thanked Hazel for them.
Everybody was happy and satisfied. Everybody said he or she had received just exactly the thing. Tell alone could not express his gratification in words. He had been given his woollen stocking, and nosed about till he had brought forth three fat dog-biscuit, a deliciously juicy-greasy beef bone, wrapped in white waxed paper and tied at one end with a blue ribbon, a fine nickelplated dog collar with a bell attached, and last, from the brown woollen toe, three lumps of sugar.
One by one he took the gifts and laid them down at Mrs. Blossom's feet; putting one huge paw firmly on the waxed-paper package, he waved the other wildly until she took it and spoke a loving word to him. Then, taking up his beloved bone, he retired with it to the farthest end of the long-room, under the kitchen sink, and licked it in peace and joy.
Jack and Chi in the joyful confusion had slipped from the room.
Soon there was a commotion in the woodshed, and the two made their appearance dragging after them a brand-new double-runner and a real Canadian toboggan, which Jack had ordered from Montreal for March.
Breakfast proved to be a short meal, for the whole family was wild to try the new toboggan with Jack to engineer it. Then it was up and down--down and up the steep mountain road; Jack and Doctor Heath, Mr. Clyde, Mr. Blossom and Chi, all on together--clinging for dear life, laughing, whooping, panting, hurrahing like boys let out from school, while March and Budd and Rose and Hazel and Cherry flew after them on the double-runner, the keen air biting rose-red cheeks, and bringing the stinging water to the eyes.
But what sport it was!
"Now, this is something like," panted Jack, drawing up the hill with Chi, his handsome face aglow with life and joy.