“Hip, hip, hurrah!” called Jack, baptizing himself with a good sprinkle, as he waved his glass and drank the toast with a look that made his mother’s eyes fill with happy tears.

Jill threw her mother a kiss, feeling very grown up and elegant to be dining out in such style.  Then they drank every one’s health with much merriment, till Frank declared that Jack would float off on the deluge of water he splashed about in his enthusiasm, and Mamma proposed a rest after the merry-making.

“Now the best fun is coming, and we have not long to wait,” said the boy, when naps and rides about the room had whiled away the brief interval between dinner and dusk, for the evening entertainment was to be an early one, to suit the invalids’ bedtime.

“I hope the girls will like their things.  I helped to choose them, and each has a nice present.  I don’t know mine, though, and I’m in a twitter to see it,” said Jill, as they lay waiting for the fun to begin.

“I do; I chose it, so I know you will like one of them, any way.”

“Have I got more than one?”

“I guess you’ll think so when they are handed down.  The bell was going all day yesterday, and the girls kept bringing in bundles for you; I see seven now,” and Jack rolled his eyes from one mysterious parcel to another hanging on the laden boughs.

“I know something, too.  That square bundle is what you want ever so much.  I told Frank, and he got it for his present.  It is all red and gold outside, and every sort of color inside; you’ll hurrah when you see it.  That roundish one is yours too; I made them,” cried Jill, pointing to a flat package tied to the stem of the tree, and a neat little roll in which were the blue mittens that she had knit for him.

“I can wait;” but the boy’s eyes shone with eagerness, and he could not resist firing two or three pop-corns at it to see whether it was hard or soft.

“That barking dog is for Boo, and the little yellow sled, so Molly can drag him to school, he always tumbles down so when it is slippery,” continued Jill, proud of her superior knowledge, as she showed a small spotted animal hanging by its tail, with a red tongue displayed as if about to taste the sweeties in the horn below.

“Don’t talk about sleds, for mercy’s sake!  I never want to see another, and you wouldn’t, either, if you had to lie with a flat-iron tied to your ankle, as I do,” said Jack, with a kick of the well leg and an ireful glance at the weight attached to the other that it might not contract while healing.

“Well, I think plasters, and liniment, and rubbing, as bad as flat-irons any day.  I don’t believe you have ached half so much as I have, though it sounds worse to break legs than to sprain your back,” protested Jill, eager to prove herself the greater sufferer, as invalids are apt to be.

“I guess you wouldn’t think so if you’d been pulled round as I was when they set my leg.  Caesar, how it did hurt!” and Jack squirmed at the recollection of it.