John’s thin, sallow face glowed, his black eyes gleamed as he watched the children unwrap the packages.  In the midst of the excitement, Lydia shrieked.

“My ducks!  My ducks!” and bolted for the kitchen.

“The pie!” cried Lizzie, panting after her.

“Don’t tell me they’re spoiled!” groaned Amos, as with John and the baby, he followed into the kitchen.

“Safe!” shouted Lydia, on her knees before the oven.  “Just the pope’s nose is scorched!  The pie is perfect.”

“Let’s eat before anything else happens,” said Amos, nervously.

“Lord!” said John Levine, “who’d miss spending Christmas where there are children?  I’d a gotten out here to-day if I’d had to come barefooted.”

The dinner was eaten and pronounced perfect.  The gifts were re-examined and re-admired.  John Levine, with Lydia and Florence Dombey on his lap, Amos with the drowsy little Patience in his arms, and Lizzie, her tired hands folded across her comfortable stomach, sat round the base burner while the wind rose outside and the boom of the ice-locked lake filled the room from time to time.

“Fearful cold when the ice cracks that way,” said Amos.

“‘The owl, for all his feathers was a-cold,’” murmured Lydia.

“Where’d you get that and what’s the rest of it?” asked Levine.

“Selected Gems,” replied Lydia.  “It’s a book at school.

  “’St. Agnes Eve—­Ah, bitter chill it was! 
  The owl for all his feathers was a-cold;
  The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass
  And silent was the flock in woolly fold.’

I forget the rest.”

The grown-ups glanced at each other over the children’s heads.

“Say your pretty Christmas poem you spoke at school, Lydia,” suggested old Lizzie.

Lydia rested her head back comfortably on John’s shoulder and rambled on in her childish contralto.

  “Sing low, indeed:  and softly bleat,
  You lambing ewes about her feet,
  Lest you should wake the child from sleep! 
  No other hour so still and sweet
  Shall fall for Mary’s heart to keep
  Until her death hour on her creep,
  Sing soft, the Eve of Mary.”

There was silence for a moment.

“Why did you choose that one, young Lydia?” asked Levine.

“I don’t know.  I seemed to like it,” answered Lydia.  “It’s a girl’s poem.  Gosh, I’ve been happy to-day!  Daddy, you thought we’d have an awful poor Christmas, didn’t you?  Poor old Daddy!  Why, I’ve just felt all day as if my heart was on tip-toes.”

It had indeed been a high day for the child.  Perhaps she remembered it for years after as one of her perfect days, because of the heart breaking days that followed.

For little Patience for the first time in her tiny life was taken ill.  For three or four days after Christmas she was feverish and cross with a hoarse cold.  When Amos came home the fourth night, he thought she had the croup and sent Lydia pelting through the darkness for the dairy farmer’s wife.  Mrs. Norton, the mother of Billy, was not long in coming to a decision.