“You like us now, don’t you? she asked.

“I like you.”

“And you’ll like her,” pointing to her sister with a small distinct finger, “and him,” pointing to her brother, “to-morrow morning.  You’ll know us all to-morrow morning.”

“To-morrow will be Christmas,” said Laddie, as if giving a piece of useful information to the company in general.

“Christmas!” cried Danby; “so it will.  I mustn’t forget to hang up my stocking.”

This provoked a burst of mirth.  Uncle Tom’s stocking!  Uncle Tom hoping to get anything from Santa Claus!

“You needn’t laugh,” said Mr. Danby, seriously.  “I mean to hang up one of my big Inverness stockings.  It will hold a lot.”

“What do you expect to get?” asked Laddie, intensely amused.  “Toys?”

“No:  chocolates, butter-scotch, hardbake, alecompane.”

“Oh, what’s alecompane?”

The name of this old-fashioned sweetmeat was received with derision.

“Why, what an old sweet-tooth you must be!” exclaimed Moppet; “but I don’t believe you a bit.  I shall come in the middle of the night to see if your stocking is there.”

“You won’t find my room.  You’ll go into the wrong room most likely, and find one of the three bears.”

Moppet laughed at the notion of those familiar beasts.

“There never were three bears that lived in a house, and had beds and chairs and knives and forks and things,” she said.  “I used to believe it once when I was very little”—­she said “veway little”—­“but now I know it isn’t true.”

She looked round the table with a solemn air, with her lips pursed up, challenging contradiction.  Her quaint little face, in which the forehead somewhat overbalanced the tiny features below it, was all aglow with mind.  One could not imagine more mind in any living creature than was compressed within this quaint scrap of humanity.

Sir John watched her curiously.  He had no experience of children of that early age.  His own daughters had been some years older before he began to notice them.  He could but wonder at this quick and eager brain animating so infinitesimal a body.

Moppet looked round the table; and what a table it was!  She had never seen anything like it.  Cornwall, like Scotland, has a prodigious reputation for breakfasts; but Cornwall, on occasion, can almost rival Yorkshire in the matter of tea.  Laddie and Lassie had set to work already, one on each side of Miss Hawberk, who was engaged with urn and teapot.  Moppet was less intent upon food, and had more time to wonder and scrutinize.  Her big mind was hungrier than her little body.

“Oh, what a lot of candles!” she cried.  “You must be very rich, Mr. Old Gentleman.”