e'd love to see all the rats and things. He wouldn't bark
if we told him not to, and I held his collar."

"If Aunt Amy sat next him he would," said Mary.

"Oh, bother Aunt Amy," said Jeremy.

After this Helen needed a great deal of urging; but she heard that Lucy
and Angela, the aforesaid daughters of the Dean, were going, and the
spirit of rivalry drove her forward.

It happened that the Dean himself one day said something to Mr. Cole
about "supporting a very praiseworthy effort. They are presenting,
I understand, the proceeds of the first performance to the Cathedral
Orphanage."

Helen was surprised at the readiness with which her request was granted.

"We'll all go," said Mr. Cole, in his genial, pastoral fashion. "Good
for us... good for us... to see the little ones laugh. .. good for us
all."

Only Uncle Samuel said "that nothing would induce him--"

II

I pass swiftly over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after,
although I should like to linger upon these sumptuous dates. Jeremy had
a sumptuous time; Hamlet had a sumptuous time (a whole sugar rat, plates
and plates of bones, and a shoe of Aunt Amy's); Mary and Helen had
sumptuous times in their own feminine fashion.

Upon the evening of Christmas Eve, when the earth was snow-lit, and
the street-lamps sparkled with crystals, and the rime on the doorsteps
crackled beneath one's feet, Jeremy accompanied his mother on a
present-leaving expedition. The excitement of that! The wonderful shapes
and sizes of the parcels, the mysterious streets, the door-handles and
the door-bells, the glittering stars, the maidservants, the sense of the
lighted house, as though you opened a box full of excitements and then
hurriedly shut the lid down again. Jeremy trembled and shook, not with
cold, but with exalting, completely satisfying happiness.

There followed the Stocking, the Waits, the Carols, the Turkey, the
Christmas Cake, the Tree, the Presents, Snapdragon, Bed... There
followed Headache, Ill-temper, Smacking of Mary, Afternoon Walk, Good
Temper again, Complete Weariness, Hamlet sick on the Golden Cockatoos,
Hamlet Beaten, Five minutes with Mother downstairs, Bed. .. Christmas
was over.

From that moment of the passing of Boxing Day it was simply the counting
of the minutes to "Dick Whittington." Six days from Boxing Day. Say you
slept from eight to seven--eleven hours; that left thirteen hours; six
thirteen hours was, so Helen said, seventy-eigh