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Little Biddy was careening round and round, crying out: "To-morrow's Chris'mas! Santa Claus is coming tonight." Matthew was regarding her indulgently, sympathetically, Moreton rather scornfully. The myth had been exploded for both, but Matthew still hugged it. That was the difference between them. Maude, seated on the floor, perceived me first, and glanced up at me with a smile.
To my surprise, she wore a decent-looking dress of gray homespun cloth and a white cloud looped over her head and ears and tied around her neck and a good pair of boots. "Merry Chris'mas!" we all shouted. She smiled and nodded her head and sat down in the chair which Uncle Peabody had placed for her at the stove side.
And when my grandfather and the ladies and gentlemen, his guests, came down the curving stairs, there were the broadly smiling servants drawn up in the wide hall, all who could gather there, and the rest on the lawn outside, to wish "Merry Chris'mas" to "de quality."
Michel and Madame Laurent smiled greetings across the street at each other, and the salutation from a passer-by recalled the many-progenied landlady to herself. "Miss Sophie, well, po' soul, not ver' much Chris'mas for her. Mais, I'll jus' call him in fo' to spen' the day with me. Eet'll cheer her a bit." It was so clean and orderly within the poor little room.
Hennessy coming in with a doll in his pocket and a rocking-chair under his arm. "Prisints?" said the philosopher. "Yis," said Mr. Hennessy. "I had to do it. I med up me mind this year that I wudden't buy anny Chris'mas prisints or take anny. I can't afford it.
Ivry little boy ixpects a pony at Chris'mas, an' ivry little girl a chain an' locket; an' ivry man thinks he's sure goin' to get th' goold-headed cane he's longed f'r since he come over. But they all fin'lly land on rockin'-horses an' dolls, an' suspindhers that r-run pink flowers into their shirts an' tattoo thim in summer.
In looking at and trying on the "bewt'ful Chris'mas present," a pair of elaborately embroidered moccasins lined and bordered with rabbit fur, and in dressing Wallula up in the tartan dress, the time flew so rapidly that long before Molly expected it the cabin door opened again, and the tall gaunt figure reappeared. Behind it followed another figure.
"Chris'mas time, we had two or three days to play, an' had extry food. "I seen 'pattyrollers' ridin' 'bout to keep de darkies from runnin' 'roun' widout passes. I never seen 'em whup none but dey tol' us we'd git twen'y-nine licks iffen we got caught by 'em. I seen darkies git whuppin's on other plantations whup 'em half a day sometimes, gen'ly when dey tried to run away.
"Merry Chris'mas!" he called as he passed them and increased his weight upon the pedals. The officers of the law, cheered as by a greeting from Santa Claus himself, responded with an equally hearty Merry Christmas. At three o'clock The Hopper reached Happy Hill Farm, knocked as before at the kitchen door, and was admitted by Humpy. "Wot ye got now?" snarled the reformed yeggman.
"Well, 'taint a suent engine at the best, Elias that o' yourn," said his affable leader, "nor to be lightly trusted among the proper psa'ms, 'specially since Chris'mas three year, when we sat in the forefront of the gallery, an' you dropped all but the mouthpiece overboard on to Aunt Belovely's bonnet at 'I was glad when they said unto me." "Aye, poor soul. It shook her.