“I am glad thee does, child; but that doesn’t take much love, for thee knows I haven’t a great deal of hair.”

“But, grandma, how could you live without Christmas trees and things?”

“I was happy enough, Alice.”

“But you’d have been a great deal happier, grandma, if you’d had a Santa Claus!  It’s so nice to believe what isn’t true!”

“Ah! does thee think so?  There was one thing I believed when I was a very little girl, and it was not true.  I believed the cattle knelt at midnight on Christmas eve.”

“Knelt, grandma?  For what?”

“Because our blessed Lord was born in a manger.”

“But they didn’t know that.  Cows can’t read the Bible.”

“It was an idle story, of course, like the one about Mother Knowles.  A man who worked at our house, Israel Grossman, told it to me, and I thought it was true.”

Here grandma gazed into the coals again.  She could see Israel Grossman sitting on a stump, whittling a stick and puffing away at a short pipe.

“Well, children,” said she, “I have talked to you long enough about things that are past and gone.  On the whole, I don’t say they were good old times, for the times now are a great deal better.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Prudy.

“Except one thing,” added grandma, looking at Dotty, who was snapping the tongs together.  “Children had more to do in my day than they have now.”

Dotty blushed.

“Grandma,” said she, “I’m having a playtime, you know, ’cause there can’t anybody stop to fix my work.  But mother says after the holidays I’m going to have a stint every day.”

“That’s right, dear.  Now thee may run down and get me a skein of red yarn thee will find on the top shelf in the nursery closet.”

CHAPTER XI.

THE CRYSTAL WEDDING.

As the crystal wedding was to take place on the twenty-fourth, the Christmas tree was deferred till the night after, and was not looked forward too by the children as anything very important.  They had had a tree, a Kris Kringle, or something of the sort, every year since they could remember; but a wedding was a rare event, and to be a bridesmaid was as great an honor, Dotty thought, as could be conferred on any little girl.

It was intended that everything should be as much as possible like the original wedding.  Mrs. Parlin was to wear the same dove-colored silk and bridal veil she had worn then, and Mr. Parlin the same coat and white vest, though they were decidedly out of fashion by this time.  Dotty was resplendent in a white dress with a long sash, a gold necklace of her aunt Eastman’s, and a pair of white kid slippers.  Johnny was to be groomsman.  He was a boy who was always startling his friends with some new idea, and this time he had “borrowed” a silver bouquet-holder out of his mother’s drawer, and filled it with the loveliest greenhouse flowers.