“Minna,” protests Peggy, “you mustn’t eat another bit of candy!” and Minna opens her mouth in a howl, prolonged, but without tears and without change of colour.  Robin joins in, he does not know why.  Peggy is a doting aunt, but an honest one.  She is vexed by a growing conviction that Mabel’s babies are sadly spoiled.  Peggy is ashamed of herself; surely she ought to be perfectly happy playing with Minna and Robin.  Instead, she finds that the thing she would like best of all to be doing at this moment, next to going to church, would be to be lying on her father’s couch in the office, all by herself, reading.

The dinner is a savoury triumph for Peggy and her mother.  The gravy and the mashed potato are entirely of Peggy’s workmanship, and Peggy has had a hand in most of the other dishes, too, as the mother proudly tells.  How that merry party can eat!  Peggy is waitress, and it is long before the passing is over, and she can sit down in her own place.  She is just as fond of the unusual Christmas good things as are the rest, but somehow, before she is well started at her turkey, it is time for changing plates for dessert, and before she has tasted her nuts and raisins the babies have succumbed to sleepiness, and it is Peggy who must carry them upstairs for their nap—­just in the middle of one of Hazen’s funniest stories, too.

And all the time the little sister is so ready, so quickly serviceable, that somehow nobody notices—­nobody but the doctor.  It is he who finds Peggy, half as hour later, all alone in the kitchen.  The mother and the older daughters are gathered about the sitting-room hearth, engaged in the dear, delicious talk about the little things that are always left out of letters.

The doctor interrupts them.

“Peggy is all alone,” he says.

“But we’re having such a good talk,” the mother pleads, “and Peggy will be done in no time!  Peggy is so handy!”

“Well, girls?” is all the doctor says, with quiet command in his eyes, and Peggy is not left to wash the Christmas dishes all alone.  Because she is smiling and her cheeks are bright, her sisters do not notice that her eyes are wet, for Peggy is hotly ashamed of certain thoughts and feelings that she cannot down.  She forgets them for a while, however, sitting on the hearth-rug, snuggled against her father’s knee in the Christmas twilight.

Yet the troublesome thoughts came back in the evening, when Peggy sat upstairs in the dark with Minna, vainly trying to induce the excited little girl to go to sleep, while bursts of merriment from the family below were always breaking in upon the two in their banishment.

There was another restless night of it with the little niece, and another too early waking.  Everybody but Minna was sleepy enough, and breakfast was a protracted meal, to which the “children” came down slowly one by one.  Arna did not appear at all, and Peggy carried up to her the daintiest of trays, all of her own preparing.  Arna’s kiss of thanks was great reward.  It was dinner-time before Peggy realized it, and she had hoped to find a quiet hour for her Latin.