"It's rather cold, isn't it, Phil?" Lois remarked.
"Chilly in here—rather!" said Phil in the same key.
"Phil!" thundered the aunts.
"Christmas is nicer with snow. I hate green Christmases," observed Lois, who had not changed her position.
"I've never seen but two," replied Phil, as readily as though the dialogue had been rehearsed; "and I hated them." Then, drawing her hand from her muff, she flung it out in a burlesque of the amateur recitationist:—
"O pray, upon my Christmas morn,
Let snow the leaf-shorn boughs adorn.
"How is that, Amy! A little worse than my worst?" She stepped round her Aunt Kate, shook hands with her mother, then upon second thought dropped her muff, seized both her hands, and kissed her.
"Were you all really just about going? I'm late! Made nine stops on the way, took a brief sleigh-ride with Captain Wilson, ate too much butter-scotch at the Bartletts', and here we are!"
She pushed a chair toward the hearth so violently that the castors screeched and her Aunt Kate jumped to avoid being run over.
"Why not sit down, mamma? Amy, where's my present? Here's me to you."