Then Liph set to work to introduce his cousins to Bijah, and Bush came and stood by his new friend in gray, to see that it was properly done.
"Where'd you come from?" asked Joe Simpson.
"'Sylum," said Bijah. "Where'd he catch you?"
"Catch what?" said Joe, but Liph managed to choke off the chuckle he was going into, and to shout out:
"Why, Joe, we found him in the road to-day. He thinks grandfather's old Santa Claus, and this house is Christmas."
"So I am—so it is," said Grandfather Vrooman.
"We'll make him hang up his stocking with all the rest to-night."
Bijah could not feel scared at all with so many children around him, and he was used to being among a crowd of them. Still, it was hard to feel at home after supper, and he might have had a blue time of it if it hadn't been for Liph and Bush. It had somehow got into Bush's mind that the dot in gray was under his protection, and he followed Bijah from one corner to another.
All the doors into the "dark room" were open, and it was the lightest room in the house, with its big fire on the hearth and all the lamps that were taken in after supper; but there was not one thing hanging on the Christmas tree until Grandfather Vrooman exclaimed: