do not hear of it.

But as this is a strictly candid history, I will at once confess the
truth, on behalf of my hero and his brothers and sisters. They had spent
the morning in decorating the old church, in pricking holly about the
house, and in making a mistletoe bush. Then in the afternoon they had
tasted the Christmas soup, and seen it given out; they had put a
finishing touch to the snowman by crowning him with holly, and had
dragged the yule-logs home from the carpenter's. And now, the early tea
being over, Paterfamilias had gone to finish his sermon for to-morrow;
his friend was shut up in his room; and Materfamilias was in hers, with
one of those painful headaches which even Christmas will not always keep
away. So the ten children were left to amuse themselves, and they found
it rather a difficult matter.

"Here's a nice Christmas!" said our hero. He had turned his youngest
brother out of the arm-chair, and was now lying in it with his legs
over the side. "Here's a nice Christmas! A fellow might just as well be
at school. I wonder what Adolphus Brown would think of being cooped up
with a lot of children like this! It's his party to-night, and he's to
have champagne and ices. I wish I were an only son."

"Thank you," said a chorus of voices from the floor. They were all
sprawling about on the hearth-rug, pushing and struggling like so many
kittens in a sack, and every now and then with a grumbled
remonstrance:--

"Don't, Jack! you're treading on me."

"You needn't take all the fire, Tom."

"Keep your legs to yourself, Benjamin."

"It wasn't I," etc., with occasionally the feebler cry of a small
sister,--

"Oh! you boys are so rough."

"And what are you girls, I wonder?" inquired the proprietor of the
arm-chair, with cutting irony. "Whiney piney, whiney piney. I wish there
were no such things as brothers and sisters!"

"You _wish_ WHAT?" said a voice from the shadow by the door, as deep and
impressive as that of the ghost in Hamlet.

The ten sprang up; but when the figure came into the firelight, they saw
that it was no ghost, but Paterfamilias's old college friend, who spent
most of his time abroad, and who, having no home or relatives of his
own, had come to spend Christmas at his friend's vicarage. "You wish
_what_?" he repeated.

"Well, brothers and sisters are a bore," was the reply. "One or two
would be all very well; but just look, here are ten of us; and it just
spoils everything. Whatever