How they all laughed at this and teased Lawrence.
"Just be bonbon and you'll be a 'meat-sweet' Larry," said the Professor, who appeared this evening to have laid aside all official dignity and become as youthful as his brother Dodo.
After dinner the table was cleared, the fire built up, and the company gathered around the hearth. They roasted chestnuts and told ghost stories. Otoyo in the quaintest English told a blood-curdling Japanese story which interested Professor Green so deeply that he took out a little book and jotted down notes, and questioned her regarding names and places.
Molly knew a true story of a haunted house in Kentucky, fallen into ruins because no one had dared live in it for years.
Then Mrs. Murphy brought in the lamps and Professor Green drew up at the table and read aloud Dickens's "Christmas Carol." Molly's mother had read to her children the immortal story of "Tiny Tim" ever since they could remember on Christmas day, and it gave Molly much secret pleasure to know that these dear kind friends had kept up the same practice. After that they fetched down Judy's guitar and, with Molly accompanying, they sang some of the good old songs that people think they have forgotten until they hear the thrum of the guitar and someone starts the singing.
At last the tower clock boomed midnight, and as the echo of the final stroke vibrated in the room, the door opened and Santa Claus stood on the threshold.
"Shure, an' I'm just on the nick of time," he said with a good Irish accent, as he unstrapped his pack and proceeded to distribute packages done up in white tissue paper tied with red ribbons.
There were presents for everyone with no names attached, but Molly suspected Professor Green of being the giver of the pretty things. Hers was a volume of Rossetti's poems bound in dark blue leather. There was a pretty volume of Tennyson's poems for Otoyo; and funny gifts for everybody, with delightful jingles attached which the Professor read very gravely. Otoyo almost had hysterics over her toy, which was simply a small, imitation book shelf on which was a row of the works of Emerson and Carlyle, filled with "meat-sweets."
Only one thing happened to mar that evening's pleasure, and this was the fault of the little Japanese herself, to her undying mortification and sorrow. When the party was at its very height and they had joined hands and were circling around Santa Claus, who was singing "The Wearing of the Green," Otoyo unexpectedly broke from the circle and with a funny, squeaky little scream pointed wildly at the window.
"Why, child, what frightened you?" asked Miss Grace Green, taking the girl's hand and looking into her white, scared face.