Just then Chi came in, and gave a loud preliminary, "Hem!" for to him, Ben and Mary Blossom would always be lovers. "Guess 't is 'bout time to hitch up, if you 're goin' clear down to Barton's to meet the train, Ben; I 've got to go over eastwards with the children."
"All right, Chi, I 'd rather drive down to the station to-night; it's good sleighing and our Mountain is a fine sight by moonlight."
"Can't be beat," said Chi, emphatically. "S'pose you 'll be back by seven, sharp? I kind of want to time myself, on account of the s'prise."
"We 'll say seven, and I 'll make it earlier if I can. You 're off for Aunt Tryphosa's now?"
"Just finished loadin' up--There they are!" and in rushed the whole troop, hooded and mittened and jacketed and leggined, ready for their after-sunset raid.
"Good-bye, Martie!" screamed Cherry, wild with excitement, and made a dash for the door; then she turned back with another dash that nearly upset May, and, throwing her arms around her mother's neck, nearly squeezed the breath from her body. "O Mumpsey, Dumpsey, dear! I 'm having such an awfully good time; it's so much happier than last Christmas!"
"And, O Popsey, Dopsey, dear!" laughed Rose, mimicking her, but with a voice full of love, and both mittens caressing his face, "it's so good to have you well enough to celebrate this year!"
Hazel slipped her hand into Chi's, and whispered, "Oh, Chi, I wish I had a lot of brothers and sisters like Rose. Anyway, papa's coming to-night, so I 'll have one of my own," she added proudly.
"Guess we 'd better be gettin' along," said Chi, still holding Hazel's hand. "It's goin' to be a stinger, 'n' it's a mile 'n' a half over there."
"Come on all!" cried March; "we 'll be back before you are, father."
"We 'll see about that," laughed his father, as he caught the merry twinkle in his wife's eye.
But March was right by the margin of only a minute or two; for just as the merry crowd entered the house on their return from their errand of "goodwill," they heard Mr. Blossom drive the sleigh into the barn. In another moment Hazel had flung wide the door and was caught up into her father's arms.
In the midst of their cordial greetings there was a loud knock at the door. They all started at the sound, and Budd, who was nearest, opened it.
"Please, Budd, may I come in, too?" said a voice everyone recognized as the Doctor's.
Then the whole Blossom household lost their heads where they had lost their hearts the year before. Rose and Hazel and Cherry fairly smothered him with kisses; Budd wrung one hand, March gripped another; May clung to one leg, and the monster of a puppy contrived to get under foot, although he stood two feet ten.
Jack Sherrill, looking in at the window upon all this loving hominess, felt, somehow, physically and spiritually left out in the cold. "What a fool I was to come!" he said to himself. Nevertheless he carried out his part of the program by stepping up to the door and knocking. This time Mrs. Blossom opened it.
"Have you room for one more, Mrs. Blossom?" he said with an attempt at a smile, but looking sadly wistful, so wistful and lonely that Mary Blossom put out both hands without a word, and, somehow,--Jack, in thinking it over afterwards, never could tell how it happened so naturally--he was giving her a son's greeting, and receiving a mother's kiss in return.
In a moment Hazel's arms were around his neck;--"Oh, Jack, Jack! I 've got three of my own now; I 'm almost as rich as Rose!"
Rose, hearing her name, came forward with frank, cordial greeting, and May transferred her demonstrations of affection from the Doctor's trousers to Jack's; Cherry's curls bobbed and quivered with excitement when Jack claimed a kiss from "Little Sunbonnet," and received two hearty smacks in return; March took his travelling bag; Budd kept close beside him, and the puppy, who had been christened Tell, nosed his hand, and, sitting down on his haunches, pawed the air frantically until Jack shook hands with him, too.
By this time the wistful look had disappeared from Jack's eyes, and his handsome face was filled with such a glad light that the Doctor noticed it at once. He shook his head dubiously, with his eyebrows drawn together in a straight line over the bridge of his nose, and, from underneath, his keen eyes glanced from Jack to Rose and from Rose back again to Jack. Then his face cleared, and explanations were in order.
"Why, you see," the Doctor said to Mrs. Blossom, "my wife had to go South with her sister, and could not be at home for Christmas--the first we 've missed celebrating together since we were married--and when I found John was coming up to spend it with you, I couldn't resist giving myself this one good time. But Jack here has failed to give any satisfactory account of how or why he came to intrude his long person just at this festive time. I thought you were off at a Lenox house-party with the Seatons?" he said, quizzically.
Jack laughed good-naturedly. "I don't blame you for wondering at my being here; but I've been here before," he said, willing to pay back the Doctor in his own coin.
"The deuce you have!" exclaimed the Doctor. "I say, Johnny, are we growing old that these young people get ahead of us so easily?"
"I don't know how you feel, Dick, but I 'm as young as Jack to-night."
"That 's right, Papa Clyde," said Hazel, approvingly, softly patting her father on the head; "and, Jack, you 're a dear to come up here to see us, for you 've just as much right as the Doctor."
The Doctor pretended to grumble:--"Come to see you, indeed, you superior young woman--_you_ indeed! As if there weren't any other girls in the world or on Mount Hunger but you and Rose--much you know about it."
"Well, I 'd like to know who you came to see, if not us?" laughed Hazel, sure of her ultimate triumph.
"Why, my dear Ruth Ford, to be sure."
"Ruth Ford!" they exclaimed in amazement.
"Why not Ruth Ford? You did n't suppose I would come away up here into the wilds of Vermont in the dead of winter, did you? just to see--"
But Hazel laid her hand on his mouth.
"Stop teasing, do," she pleaded, "and tell us how you knew our Ruth."
"_Our_ Ruth! Ye men of York, hear her!" said the Doctor, appealing to Mr. Clyde and Jack. "The next thing will be 'our Alan Ford,' I suppose.
How will you like that, Jack?"
"I feel like saying 'confound him,' only it would n't be polite. You see, Doctor, I thought I had preempted the whole Mountain, and was prepared to make a conquest of Miss Maria-Ann Simmons even; but if Mr.
Ford has stepped in"--Jack assumed a tragic air--"there is nothing left for me in honor, but to throw down the gauntlet and challenge him to single combat--hockey-sticks and hot lemonade--for her fair hand."
At the mention of Maria-Ann, Rose and Hazel, Budd and Cherry and March went off into fits of laughter. They laughed so immoderately that it proved infectious for their elders, and when Chi entered the room Budd cried out, "Oh, Chi, you tell about the--we can't--the rooster and the hoods, and--Oh my eye!--" Budd was apparently on the verge of convulsions.
"I stuffed snow into my mouth and made my teeth ache so as not to laugh out loud," said Cherry; at which there was another shout, and still another outburst at the table when Chi described the scene in the hen-house.
"Now, children," said Mrs. Blossom, after the somewhat hilarious evening meal was over, the table cleared, the dishes were wiped and put away, "we 're going to do just for this once as you want us to--hang up our stockings; but I want all of you to hang up yours, too. If you don't, I shall miss the sixes and sevens and eights so, that it will spoil my Christmas."
"We will, Martie," they assented, joyfully; for, as March said, it would not seem like night before Christmas if they did not hang up their stockings.
"Yes, and papa, and you," said Hazel, turning to the Doctor, "must hang up yours, and you, too, Jack."
"Why, of course," said Mrs. Blossom, "everybody is to hang up a stocking to-night, even Tell."
"Oh, Martie, how funny!" cried Cherry, "but he has n't a truly stocking."
"No, but one of Budd's will do for his huge paw--won't it, old fellow?"
she said, patting his great head.
Then Budd must needs bring out a pair of his pedal coverings and try one brown woollen one on Tell, much to his majesty's surprise; for Tell was a most dignified youth of a dog, as became his nine months and his famous breed.
Early in the evening the stockings were hung up over the fireplace, all sizes and all colors:--May's little red one and Chi's coarse blue one; Mr. Clyde's of thick silk, and Budd's and Tell's of woollen; Hazel's of black cashmere beside Jack's striped Balbriggan. What an array!
Then Mrs. Blossom and May went off into the bedroom, and Mr. Blossom and his guests were forced to smoke their after-tea cigars in the guest bedroom upstairs, while the young people brought out their treasures and stuffed the grown-up stockings till they were painfully distorted.
"Don't they look lovely!" whispered Hazel, ecstatically to March, who begged Rose to get another of their mother's stockings, for the one proved insufficient for the fascinating little packages that were labelled for her.
"Let's go right to bed now," suggested Budd, "then mother 'll fill ours--Oh, I forgot," he added, ruefully, "we are n't going to have presents this year--"
"Why, yes, we are, too, Budd," said Rose, "we 're going to give one another out of our own money."
"Cracky! I forgot all about that--" Budd tore upstairs in the dark, and tore down again and into the bedroom, crying:--"Now all shut your eyes while I 'm going through!" which they did most conscientiously.