Pat looked at Jim, and Jim looked at Mike, and all three, open-mouthed, looked at the little golden head in the doorway.
“I just came in to bring you some pretty story books of mine, and a cap of brother Jack’s, and a nice new pair of shoes for Mike. How do you do, Mike, this morning? Papa—he’s the doctor who brought you home, Mike—is coming soon to see you.”
She had emptied her little leathern bag, laid down her gifts on a chair, and vanished before Winnie got up the stairs from the wood-house, or Mrs. Slattery, in the closet, had finished skewering up the goose, or a single little Slattery had found a word to say.
I cannot stay to tell you about the Slatterys’ Christmas dinner, and Mike perched up at the table, with brother Jack’s cap on his head, and the new pair of shoes on the floor by his side. I have just time to stop a minute at Meadow Home, where a little golden head, with a little blue velvet hat tilted atop, flits in before me at the great hall door. As I went quickly through the holly and under the wreaths, a little voice, in wheedling tones, called from the gallery above,—
“Stay to dine to dinner?”
At the same time a small dancing jack, dangling from somewhere overhead, caught by his hands and feet in my chignon, as if striving to pull me up. Ah, naughty Chrissy!
Chrissy clapped his hands in delight, and then dropping the string of the little jack, ran away swiftly to hide.
“Do stay to dine, aunt Clara,” begged Mabel, and Alice, and Ely, all three springing forward at once to disengage the jumping jack from my hair.
“Ah, do, Miss Clara; I’ve something to tell you about a little boy I saw this morning,” pleaded little golden-head, peering through an evergreen arch. “Do stay and see the Christmas tree lighted after dinner,” besought all four, gathering closely around me.
But aunt Clara was engaged to dine at the square old house over the way, with the dear old lady who could not see the pine wreaths that made her old-fashioned parlor so sweet with their resinous, balmy fragrance.