Elizabeth did not look at her young brother, but undid the paper, opened the book and read:
"It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold:
'Peace on the earth, good-will to men,
From heaven's all-gracious King!'
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing."
"How nice! and the pictures are beautiful, Thomas. It's a lovely present. Look at it, Buff!"
Buff looked at it and then he looked at Thomas. "What made you think I wanted a book about angels?" he demanded.
"Nothing in your behaviour, old man," his sister hastened to assure him. "D'you know you've never said Thank you!"
Buff said it, but there was a marked lack of enthusiasm in his tone.
"I didn't buy it," Thomas said, feeling the present needed some explanation. "Aunt Jeanie sent it at Christmas to Papa, and Papa wasn't caring much about angels, and Mamma said I could give it to Buff; she said it might improve him."
"I knew he didn't buy it!" shouted Buff, passing over the aspersion on his character. "I knew it all the time. Nobody would buy a book like that: it's the kind that get given you."
"Aunt Jeanie sent me the Prodigal Son," broke in Billy in his gentle little voice (he often acted as oil to the troubled waters of Buff and Thomas). "I like the picture of the Prodigal eating the swine's husks. There's a big swine looking at him as if it would bite him."
"Should think so," Thomas said. "If you were a swine you wouldn't like prodigals coming eating your husks."