"And I want a horsey, and a wagon to hatchen on behind," Allyn shouted.

"And I must have a new sled, and I want a set of furs and a canary bird," Phebe clamored.

"Is that all?" Hubert inquired blandly. "Why not ask for a wedding gown and a pink elephant while you are about it, Babe? Don't be modest. I know what Teddy is going to have."

"Oh, what?" Theodora looked up from her game of euchre with Billy, who, promoted to his chair again, was spending the evening with the McAlisters.

"She'd better have a chunk of ice, to cool her off when she gets mad,"

suggested Phebe with sudden asperity, as she thought of a recent pa.s.sage at arms with her elder sister.

"Phebe!" Mrs. McAlister's tone was ominous, and Phebe subsided, grumbling, while her mother rose to put Allyn to bed.

Allyn retreated to Hubert's knee and pressed his rosy cheek against that of his brother.

"No, mamma," he urged. "Can't Phebe be tendooed first?"

"Allynesque for attended to," Theodora explained to Billy, while her mother dislodged the child from his place of refuge and marched him out of the room. "But does it seem possible that Christmas comes, next week?"

"Well, yes, I think it does. This year has been long enough to make over into a dozen ordinary ones. Let's see, when is Christmas?"

"Why, don't you know? Christmas is our great day of the year, and we count the days for months ahead. This year, it will be an extra jolly one, for we want to show mamma our ways." This from Hubert, who sat with his elbow on the arm of Billy's chair, superintending his play.

"What do you do?"

"Just what everybody else does, I suppose; give presents and make a row generally."

"Hubert, what will Billy think of us?" Hope interposed. "It's this way: mamma, our own mother, always said that Christmas was the day when we all should be children together, and play plays and have a grand frolic.

Years ago, when Hu and Teddy and I were little bits of children, we began having our basket, and we have kept it up ever since."

"We do all the things, jokes and presents and all, in bundles," Theodora said, taking up the story in her eagerness; "and we put them all in this basket. It is an old clothes-basket, large as the house and broken, but we never change it. And then we draw them out, one at a time."

"It's covered, you know, and we just fish under the cover, so as not to see what comes. They used to begin with me; but Allyn is the baby, and has the first chance now." In her interest, Phebe quite forgot to resent it when Theodora pulled her down into her lap.

Billy sat looking from one to another of the group, wondering to see the faces brighten and grow eager as the talk ran on.

"It sounds good fun," he said rather wishfully, as soon as there was a pause. "I suppose it's because there are such a lot of you."

"The more the better, of course," Hope said. "We always have Susan and James come in to look on, and even Mulvaney has his new ribbon and a bone. He has learned to know the basket, and he lies down beside it as soon as it is brought in to be filled."

"When do you do it?"

"Christmas eve," Hubert answered. "We never could stand it till Christmas day. We always rush through supper, Christmas eve, to be ready as soon as we can. You should see our house when we get everything out of the basket."

"I wish I could."

"What do you do?" Phebe demanded.

"Why, we give presents at breakfast; that's all. Of course it will be different, this year. Papa was here, last Christmas. He gave me my watch then."

"Oh!" Phebe became round-eyed with admiration. "Did he give you that? I should think you would miss him."

Hope came to the rescue.

"It will be lonely, this year. I remember how it was, after mamma died.

We didn't want to have any Christmas; but papa said she would rather we kept up the old ways, so we did just as we always had done."

"I wish we did things the way you do." Billy pushed his hair impatiently away from his face. "You don't know how it seems to a fellow to be alone. It is no sort of fun."

"Adopt us," Theodora suggested, laughing.

Billy flashed at her a swift glance which told, plainly as words, how gladly he would carry out her suggestion.

Pa.s.sing through the hall, Mrs. McAlister had heard the children's talk.

A little later, she knocked at the door of her husband's office. The doctor pushed aside the sheets of the essay he was writing for a medical journal, and rose to greet his wife.

"Well, Bess, the sanctum is glad to see you."

"Am I interrupting?" she asked, as she sat down by the table.

"Not a bit. You never do."

"So glad, for I want to talk, Jack."

"What now? Is Phebe in mischief, or is Teddy proving obstreperous?"

"Neither; it's only this." And she repeated the substance of the children's conversation. "Now are you ready to do some missionary work, Jack?"

"Of course; anything you like. What is it?"

"May Jessie and Will come to your Christmas eve?"

"Ours," he corrected gently.

"No, yours. You know I've never been here for it, and it is all new to me. I don't want to crowd your good time; but the boy is so lonely."

"Have him, of course. The Savins is large enough to hold a few more, and he needs all the fun he can get," the doctor said heartily. "There's only one thing I am afraid of."

His wife looked up quickly.

"I thought that all over before I came to you, Jack; but I have known Jessie longer than you have, and I know she won't misunderstand us. She knows we can't give expensive presents, and she will care, as we do, for the fun and the Christmas spirit. I know she will be glad to come, if only for Billy's sake."

But Mrs. Farrington demurred a little, the next day, when the plan was suggested to her.

"I have just promised Will to have you all over here," she said. "Still, if you all will promise to come here for Christmas dinner and a bran pie afterwards, Billy and I will come to your basket. We are so lonely that it is a deed of charity to take us in."

For the next week, mystery lurked in every corner of the McAlister house. With three novices to be trained in their Christmas rite, Hope and Theodora and Hubert felt that this basket must surpa.s.s all those of previous years, and they ransacked their brains, their house, and the shops for the jokes and nonsensical offerings which added spice to their simple presents. If the Christmas spirit of happiness and good-will were the true test, the McAlisters lived up to the full tradition of the day.

Gifts simple and elaborate, h.o.a.ry jokes and brand-new ones, quips and cranks of every description, were enclosed in the bundles which went into the shabby old basket, and the only clue to the possible contents of the bundles lay in the fact that, the older the joke, the more fresh and dainty was its outward disguise.