“Gracious me!” reiterated Deacon Tubman, as he proceeded to untie the knot in the pale blue ribbon smoothly bound around the package.  “Who ever knew Mirandy to make a present before?” and the deacon was so surprised at what had taken place that, for a moment, he doubted the evidence of his own senses.  “And put it in my boot, too, ha, ha!” And the deacon stopped undoing the parcel, and, lying back in the chair, roared at the thought of the prim, modest, particular Miranda perpetrating such a joke.  And when the wrapping of the package was at last undone, for every corner and crease of it was as carefully turned and as sharply edged as if the smoothing iron had passed over them,—­will wonders ever cease in this startling world of ours?—­out dropped a night-cap!  Yes, a night-cap, delicately and deftly crocheted in warm, woolen stuff of a rich cardinal color.

“Ha, ha,” laughed the deacon, as he held the cap between his thumb and forefinger of one hand up before his eyes, while he rubbed his bald crown with the other.  “Good for Mirandy.”  And then, as a small slip of white paper fluttered to the floor, he seized it, and read: 

[Handwritten:  A happy New Year
              to Deacon Tubman
                  from Miranda.]

“A good girl, a good girl,” said the deacon, “not overburdened with fat, but a good girl!” and with this rather equivocal compliment to the donor, with his boot in one hand and the cap in the other, he rushed impulsively to the stairway and shouted: 

“A happy New Year to you, Mirandy.  God bless you; God bless you,” and he swung the boot, instead of the cap, vigorously over his head, while his round, rosy face beamed down the stairway into the cold hall below, like a warm harvest moon over the autumnal stubble.

In response to the deacon’s hearty, and, I may say, somewhat uproarious greeting, the kitchen door timidly opened, and Miranda, who had been astir for nearly an hour and had the table already laid for breakfast, stepped into view, and, with a smile on her face that actually broadened its thinness dangerously near to the proportions of a genial and happy reciprocation of the jovial greeting, dropped a courtesy, and said: 

“Thank you, Deacon Tubman, I hope you may have many happy returns.”

“A thousand to you, Mirandy,” shouted the deacon in response, “a thousand to you and your—­children!” and the little man swung his boot vehemently over his head and laughed like a boy at his own joke, while poor, frightened, scandalized Miranda turned and scudded, like a patch of thin vapor blown by an unexpected gust of wind, through the door into the kitchen, with a face colored scarlet from an actual, unmistakable blush, though whence the blood came that reddened the clean cold-white of her thin face is a physiological mystery.

In a moment the deacon was fully dressed and he scuttled as merrily and noisily down the resounding stairway as a gust of autumn wind running through a patch of russet leaves.  Through the hall and kitchen he bustled and out into the woodshed, where he ran against old Towser, the big Newfoundland watch-dog, who stood in the passage expectantly watching his coming.