Both the children were tired with all this labor, and Flaxie discovered, after her presents were packed and ready to send off by express, that she didn’t feel very well.
“My throat is so sore I can’t swoler,”—so she wrote on a postal to her mother; for when she was sick she wanted everybody to know it.
Before Aunt Charlotte heard of the sad condition of her throat, she had said she might go with Milly and Johnny and some of the older children in the village, to see the ladies trim the church. But when Flaxie came into the parlor with her teeth chattering, Aunt Charlotte began to fear she ought not to go out.
“Are you so very chilly, my dear?”
“Yes ’m, I am,” replied Flaxie, with a doleful look around the corners of her mouth. “This house isn’t heated by steam like my house where I live, and I’m drefful easy to freeze!” And her teeth chattered again.
Aunt Charlotte looked anxious, as she drew on her gloves.
“My child, you’d better not go to the church, for it’s rather cold there.”
“Cold as a barn,” put in Johnny.
“Oh, auntie, do please, lemme go! I’m cold, but it’s a warm cold though,” said Flaxie, eagerly; and her teeth stopped chattering.
“I’m sorry, Flaxie, but there’s a chill in the air like snow, and if your throat is sore it is much wiser for you to stay at home,” said Aunt Charlotte, gently but firmly, like a good mother who is accustomed to be obeyed by her children.