If Flaxie’s mother had been at Hilltop, she would have sent Uncle Ben and Aunt Charlotte to bed; but as she was not there, and they didn’t know any better, they sat up all night watching their queer little niece.
Rather a sorry “Christmas eve” all around the house,—but a beautiful Christmas morning, and not a cloud in the sky. Flaxie woke as gay as a bird, without the least recollection of the horrors she had suffered in the night from tigers and tea-kettles.
“Wish you merry Christmas!” cried she to pale Aunt Charlotte, and sprang out of bed with poultices on her feet to go after her Christmas stocking.
“Well, is this the little girl they thought was so sick,” said Dr. Pulsifer, when he arrived at noon, and found her and Milly lying on the rug, with a pair of twin dolls between them dressed just alike, and each with a fur cap on its head.
He felt Flaxie’s pulse and looked at her tongue, and said he “shouldn’t waste any of his nice medicine on her.”
“But my cold isn’t good at all, now honest; and my throat’s a little sore—I guess,” said Flaxie, drawing a long face, and feeling rather ashamed not to be sick now, when the doctor had been sent for on purpose!
“Never mind! If you don’t need me, your aunt does. What do you think of yourself, you little piece of mischief, running away in the night, and frightening people so that they are sick abed Christmas day?”
All Flaxie’s good time was over in a minute. Was auntie sick abed up-stairs? Was that why Flaxie hadn’t seen her since morning?
“Oh, mayn’t I go look at her?” said she, after the doctor had left. And Uncle Ben consented, thinking she wouldn’t stay a minute.
“Oh, I’m so sorry! I do love you dearly,” cried penitent Flaxie, climbing upon the bed and cuddling close to the white auntie. “Did I make you sick? I didn’t mean to; and I don’t ’member anything about the tea-kettle.”