There we will leave Mike for a while, and look after the little pine tree on its way to Meadow Home.
Such a group of round, rosy faces as were on the watch for it in the great bay window of Meadow Home, peering out in the red sunset, straining their eyes in the dim twilight, and peering still more persistently as the stars came out through the gathering darkness!
The fire danced in the grate, and the shadows danced on the wall, and the four little heads danced more and more impatiently in the window pane, as the cold winter night settled down on the world outside of Meadow Home.
“They’re run away with and threw out. What will you bet, Mab?” shouted Will, turning away from the window in disgust, and indulging in a double somerset.
“Thrown, Will,” corrected Mabel, just now more indignant with his grammar than his slang.
Mabel began to clear with her sleeve an unblurred peep through the pane, and then pressed her nose hard against the glass.
“It’s my opinion,” she said, with great pompousness, “that the Christmas trees are all sold. I told Ely not to put off buying till to-day. Don’t you remember, Alice? And so papa is just coming home without them.”
Alice poh-pohed. Alice was sitting up stiffly at a table by the fire, stuffing a pin-cushion, assisted, or, more properly, impeded, by her small brother Chrissy, who had offered his services, and would not listen to Alice’s nay. Chrissy was not handsome in any light, but by the flickering firelight he looked like a little [!-- Illustration - THE LITTLE SLATTERYS --] ogre. He sat hunched up in his chair, his knees drawn up to his nose, the sharp end of his tongue curling out of the corner of his mouth, and his small eyes actually crossed in the earnestness of his work, which consisted in snatching chances at the stuffing with a table-spoon and a cup of bran.
THE LITTLE SLATTERYS.