"Of course you may, if you 'll show me how. I never pulled candy in my life."

"Your education has been appallingly insufficient, in spite of those two years in England. But I used to be pretty good at it, and we 'll take the prize if you follow directions. Please begin by taking off those rings!" commanded Peter.

Shirley obediently slipped off several pretty rings. Then she tied on a small and frivolous ap.r.o.n, at which Peter frowned.

"Do you call that absurdity of lace and ribbons an ap.r.o.n?" he demanded.

"What do you suppose will happen to it if you drop a hunk of candy in the sticky stage on it? Here, I 'll get you one of grandma's--they 're worth something." Shirley presently found herself invested in a bountifully made ap.r.o.n of checked white material, with a bib and strings, which nearly covered her from sight. "Now you're safe--and so is the candy. The minute it's fairly cool, we 'll seize a generous portion and get away to some cool spot with it."

It was some time before this stage in the operations was reached, and meanwhile Peter found himself obliged to share his partner with Ross and Rufus, who had no idea of allowing monopolies, with no other girls present but Nancy.

The elder people, however, proved themselves nearly as good company as the younger ones, for everybody seemed to have adopted the spirit of the season and to be ready for as much fun-making as possible. And to the great satisfaction of both Peter and Shirley, not the least care-free of the company seemed Mr. Joseph Bell himself.

To Peter, especially, watching his father with an eye which took note, as the others could not, the very evident relaxation and refreshment of the occasion were a source of deep satisfaction. For once the son felt that he could himself relax and dare to get out of the hour all the joy there was in it. Happiness of this sort could not hurt, he was sure. It could only help.

"Our panful is cool enough!" declared Peter, flourishing the blue-and-white-checked gingham ap.r.o.n which veiled his long legs, as he returned from the porch, where the candy had been cooling. "Now, partner, hands b.u.t.tered, courage good? Stand ready to take hold when I say the word, I 'll work the lump into malleable condition. Open the door into the wood-shed, please. We 'll do our pulling there, if it's not too cool for you; then we 'll not get stuck."

"_Ooh-h-h!_" Shirley gave a little shriek as Peter presently, with a deft pull of his big lump into a long, smooth skein, handed her one end with the injunction to draw it out quickly and swing it back to him.

"But it's hot!"

"Of course it is, Miss Tender-Fingers! If we let it get comfortably cool we could n't pull it at all. Keep hold--keep it moving. Don 't let it stay in your fingers long enough to stick.

Pull--swing--pull--swing! Hold on! You're getting stuck! Wait a minute!"

"I can't do anything but wait!" gasped Shirley, holding up ten fingers hopelessly embedded in a ma.s.s of uncomfortably warm material.

"What! Can this be the expert stenographer, all balled up in a couple of quarts of mola.s.ses? Hold still! Don't try to work out. I 'll pull you loose. Don't let the others see. Keep away from that kitchen door!"

But Rufus, pulling smoothly away from Jane, with the art acquired by much practice in past years, spied out the tangled ones. His shout of laughter brought all the others toward the wood-shed door.

Shirley and Peter were obliged to return to the kitchen to obtain b.u.t.ter for the stuck-up fingers. They fell into a state of great merriment over the situation, in which everybody else joined appreciatively, and the old kitchen rafters rang with the laughter.

"Where would the stage ap.r.o.n be now? This is no gallery play!" jeered Peter, rescuing one long string of brownish-yellow sweetness from the front of Shirley's big white ap.r.o.n. "Want a taste? Shut your eyes and open your mouth!"

"No, thank you. Eat it yourself."

"I will," and Peter tipped back his head.

At this interesting moment the door between dining-room and kitchen swung open. A figure appeared upon the threshold--a figure clad in silk and furs, topped by a Parisian bonnet. Over its shoulder showed the heads of two others--one wearing a wonderful hat covered with fine black ostrich-plumes, the other its own thin thatch of short, iron-gray hair.

"We have found you at last!" said the voice of Mrs. Harrison Townsend.

Behind her, Olive burst into a musical peal of laughter.

"Look at Shirley, mother! Don't you think it's about time we came home to prevent her quite returning to childhood?"

Then Mr. Harrison Townsend, from the background:--"This is rather stealing a march on you, good friends. But we found our own house dark--and this is Christmas eve!"

CHAPTER VIII

PETER READS RHYMES

"Stay? Of course you'll stay!" declared Grandfather Bell to Mr. and Mrs. Townsend. "It'll do you good after all your junketing, and we'll be mightily pleased to have you."

It had not taken much persuasion. There certainly was a charm pervading the old farmhouse, and the thought of resting quietly there for a few days appealed to Mrs. Townsend. Her husband was delighted at the plan, for he had been persuaded to join his wife abroad, and several months of European travel had wearied him. Everything simple and homelike attracted him now more than ever. It had been his restlessness which had brought his party home a month before the date originally set for their return.

If there had been a goodly number of packages upon the Christmas tree on Christmas eve, there were more than double that number by the evening of Christmas day. Not only had Murray and Peter made an excursion to town, but Mrs. Townsend, mindful of many intended gifts stored away in her trunks, had sent Olive in with the others to get them.

When the Christmas dinner was over, Rufus proposed that the clan go out for an hour's skating on a pond not far away. "We can enjoy that tree a lot better if we have some good brisk exercise beforehand," he a.s.serted.

"I don't skate," said Olive, looking as if she wished she did.

"Come along with us just the same," urged Ross, "and we 'll take turns, not exactly 'sitting out' with you, but walking up and down the sh.o.r.e.

Or--we'll teach you."

Olive declined to be taught, but agreed to accompany the others.

Promenading along the bank, fur-wrapped, her dark beauty made brilliant by the frosty air which nipped her cheeks, she was a figure to compel attention. She had never seemed more companionable than now, and both Ross and Rufus enjoyed, with more zest than they had antic.i.p.ated, the period allotted to them for bearing her company. Murray, observing her with brotherly penetration, found her decidedly improved, and wondered what had happened during the months of her absence to make her so much more appreciative of her family's society than she had been wont to be.

When Peter, in his turn, came to offer himself as partner in her exile from the gaieties going on upon the ice, she greeted him with a smile so radiant that he looked at her in wonder. The old friendship between the two, begun in the earlier days of their acquaintance, and carried on through several years, while they grew from boy and girl to man and woman, had waned and nearly died of neglect on both sides during the past two years. Each had become absorbed in pursuits so different that they had little in common, and Olive, especially, had seemed to outgrow the traits of frankness and friendliness which had made Peter like her in spite of many obvious faults. Before she went away, he had come to think of her as hopelessly spoiled and artificial. But now--had something changed her point of view?

"A few years ago." said Olive, as the two paced up and down, exchanging comments on the occurrences of the past months, "I was in a hurry to be grown up. When I look at Jane and Shirley and Nancy, after having been away from them for six months, I realise that their genius for remaining girls is going to be an advantage. What a trio they are! Shouldn't you say they were all three about sixteen?"

The three had just joined hands and skated away from Murray, Ross, and Rufus, who had promptly started in pursuit. All three wore skirts of ankle length, short jackets and close little caps, and none had considered furs a necessary article of apparel for lively exercise. A blue silk scarf about Jane's throat and a scarlet one floating to the breeze from Shirley's furnished notes of colour to the agile, dark-clad figures, and three health-tinted, winsome faces looked up at the two on the bank with a gay greeting as the trio swung lightly by.

"I certainly should," agreed Peter. "I don't think Jane will ever grow old. Nan is an infant, and will be for ten years yet, as far as settling down to consider herself too old for pranks like that, and I 'm glad of it. As for your sister Shirley----"

"Tell me what you think of Shirley. The child is a continual puzzle to me; I can't make her out. This idea of working steadily at earning a salary in the office seems to be a fixed one, though I had supposed it only a freak. Does she look as contented as this all the time, or is it just the relaxation of the holiday?"

"I should say it was a permanent condition of mind. She 's more interested to-day in her work than when she began, and is growing surprisingly expert. Murray told me yesterday she wants to tackle the special foreign correspondence--French, you know. That means a lot of extra labour."

Peter spoke as if he felt a personal pride in Shirley's achievements, an att.i.tude which Shirley's sister was quick to note.

"I felt out of patience with you when she began, for I thought her zeal for making a working-girl of herself might be of your inspiring," said Olive, with a quick look at him.

"Not a bit of it. I never heard of it till she had been a week at her first studies. How should I have dared suggest such a course?"

"You and she seem to be great friends."

"Do we? It is an honour I appreciate very much," answered Peter, with a little touch of courtliness in his manner such as had often surprised her in the early days of their acquaintance, and which struck her now as decidedly interesting in a young man who spent his days in a factory, even if he was many degrees higher in position in that factory than when she had first known him. What his position was at present she did not guess, nor did she know that Murray had begun to look at him as a man to be desired in his own business, a man whose brain was undoubtedly to make him an important factor wherever he might be.

What she did recognise was that she had met few men anywhere who had the power to command her interest as Peter had always done, and seemed now more capable of doing than ever before. As for his looks--she owned to herself that she had never before realised quite how fine and resolute and altogether manly was his whole personality.

"Speaking of contentment," said Peter, breaking the little silence which had followed upon his last words, "don't you think it follows rather naturally upon feeling that you are accomplishing something worth the doing? It does n't make so much difference what it is; the point is, that you 're doing it. If it costs effort, so much the better."

"It depends on what you think is worth the doing," said Olive. "You and I would be apt to differ on that--as Shirley and I do."