"THE CHILDREN BEGAN TO SING 'GO BURY SAINT NICKLIS'"
"I just want it," she said; "I've—took a notion."
He said that she had a good many notions, it seemed to him. But he cut the little tree, with casual ease and no compunctions, and they dragged it to their home, the soft branches patterning the snow and obscuring their footprints.
"It's like real Christmas weather," Ellen said. "They can't stop that coming, anyhow."
In the kitchen Ellen's father sat before the open oven door of the cooking stove, letting the snow melt from his heavy boots.
"Hey," he said, "I was beginning to think you'd forgot about supper. What was in the trap?"
At once Ellen began talking rapidly. "Oh," she said, "we'll have some muffins to-night, father. The kind you like, with—"
"Well, what was in the trap?" the old man demanded peevishly. "Why don't you answer back? What was, Mat?"
Matthew, drying his ax blade, looked at it with one eye closed.
"Rabbit," he said.