“I hear them,” exclaimed Mabel, springing down from the window, her nose a spectacle.
Now away down stairs flew all the four, who had been wriggling for an hour in the bay window.
“Shut the door, Chrissy,” nodded the dignified Alice to Chrissy, whose eyes had marvellously uncrossed, and whose tongue had disappeared at Mabel’s announcement. Chrissy drew down his knees, and obeyed. “Spoon up the bran you spilled, Chrissy,” directed Alice, calmly stitching at her pin-cushion.
The reluctant Chrissy’s obedience was less of a success this time. The noise of a great commotion in the hall below reached the quiet chamber. Chrissy, with his face twisted inquiringly first over one shoulder and then over the other, spooned at random.
The sounds came nearer. Through the hurrying of eager feet and the clamor of glad voices was a tap-tapping on the wainscot and a thumping on the oaken stairs.
“May be it’s St. Nicholas?” questioned Chrissy, spooning very unsteadily, his eyes and his ears wide open.
“No; it isn’t time for him. He’s doing up his pack now, and they are harnessing his reindeer.”
“Who? Where?”
The door burst open, and in tumbled four children and the little pine tree. Chrissy darted forward, shrieking with delight, and fell headlong among the family group.
“What a pretty pine!” said Alice, calmly locking up the pin-cushion in her work-box.