“And we are going to pretend,” Jenny contributed, “that our chicken is a turkey. But we won’t have to pretend about the mince pie, for mother has made a lovely one.”
“I wish I could help you eat the chicken,” said the Princess wistfully, “and I should like to meet your mother. I know she is home-y. And I haven’t any mother, you know.”
“Oh,” said the little girls, round-eyed with sympathy, and then the Princess told them that all her life she had lived in a big, lonely house, and she had always yearned for a cozy home and for a sister.
After supper they popped the corn, and just as they finished in came Peter.
“I can’t find any one to help, Miss,” he announced, “and it’s snowing. I’ll have to unhitch the horses and go back to town, and get something to take you over in.”
“No,” the Princess demurred, as she stood in the middle of the room with a heaped-up dish of snowy kernels in her hand. “No, Peter, I am going to stay here all night.”
Peter stared, and the little girls cried, “Oh, will you?”
And the Princess said, “I really will. And, Peter, you can bring up the steamer trunk and my bag.”
“Won’t your friends expect you, Miss?” Peter inquired, as if awaiting orders.
“I will send a note by you,” was the calm response, and as the man went out she followed him and shut the door behind her. “Oh, Peter, Peter,” she whispered confidentially, “I am going to give them such a Christmas!”