"DO YOU LIVE WITH SANTA CLAUS IN HIS OWN HOUSE?"
On he went, and Bijah did not answer a single one of Liph's questions for five long minutes. Then he turned his black eyes full on his driver, and asked, "Do you live with Santa Claus in his own house?"
"Yes, sir-ee," responded Liph, with a great chuckle of fun; but all he had to do the rest of the way home was to spin yarns for Bijah about the way they lived at the house where all the Christmas came from.
When they got there, Liph's father and the hired man and Grandfather Vrooman were ready to lift off that Christmas tree, and carry it through the front door and hall, and set it up in the "dark room" at the end of the hall. That ought to have been the nicest room in the house, for it was right in the middle, but there were no windows in it. There were doors in every direction, however, and in the centre of the ceiling was a "scuttle hole" more than two feet square, with a wooden lid on it.
"John," said Grandfather Vrooman to Mr. Hardy, "we'll hoist the top of the tree through the hole. You go up and open the scuttle. Hitch the top good and strong. There'll be lots of things to hang on them branches."
Liph's father hurried up stairs to open the scuttle, and that gave Grandfather Vrooman a chance to think of Bijah. "Where is he, Liph?"
"Oh, he's all right. Grandmother's got him. She and mother caught him before he got into the house. He tried to run away, too."
Bijah's short legs had been too tired to carry him very fast, and Grandmother Vrooman and Mrs. Hardy had caught him before he got back to the gate.
The way they laughed about it gave him a great deal of courage, and he never cried when they took him by his red little hands; one on each side, and walked him into the house.
"Jane," said grandmother, "what will we do with him? The house'll be choke, jam, packed full, and there isn't an extra bed."