What a gala day! Nobody thought of being tired till well on into the night again, and then games and Christmas songs around aunt Ruth's cottage piano, being over, they one and all began to think of bed, and to speak even lovingly of the old routine to-morrow.
"I shall help you shovel the snow off, uncle Thomas, in front of the house," declared Bamford.
"So will I," cried George Edward, coming out of a yawn; "oh dear, I feel full of candy to my ears. I'd like a good pinch of salt."
"I'm almost sick of caramels," acknowledged Effie, daintily laying one by one in her bon-bon box to pick out a plain lemon drop. "Wouldn't it be dreadful to have to eat them always?"
George Edward made a wry face. Then he twisted his mouth up into a funny little pucker. "Let's make a candy bag and drop it at Tim Ryan's door to-morrow," he cried.
Tim Ryan was the man who took care of uncle Thomas' furnace, and swept out his store. He lived two blocks off in a dingy tenement house.
Effie closed her fingers involuntarily on her caramel with old-time fondness.
"Candy isn't good for poor folks," said Bamford sententiously, and cramming his mouth full of taffy.
"They get so little, it surprises their digestive apparatus," said uncle Thomas dryly. "I don't believe our contributions however in that line will harm them."
Hortense turned a stiff little back upon her precious candy pile, most of it saved with provident forethought to eat in the following days when amusements would run low. Could she?