any overshoes on it. What part of it is rubber?"

At that the black man threw back his head and laughed loudly. The
children all watched his open mouth and rolling eyes and flashing teeth
and finally they broke into laughter too. They could not help it.

"But," said Russ, after they had stopped laughing, "I am afraid Mr.
Armatage will be angry with us."

"I dunno--I dunno, chile," said the negro, shaking his head. "He sure is
partic'lar 'bout dat rubber plant. But mebbe I can repot it and fix it
up all right. It's only just been uprooted, and I was gwine to change de
dirt in dat tub, anyway."

"Oh! Do you think you can do it and save Mun Bun and Margy from getting
a scolding?" Rose cried.

"We'll see, lil' Miss. Shouldn't wonder," and the gardener went to work
at once.

Meanwhile Bobo sat on his haunches and mournfully looked at what was
going on. His red eyes had a very sad expression and his drooping ears
made him look, so Rose said, more mournful still.

"He looks as if he'd just come from a funeral," she said to Russ.

"What's that?" demanded Margy promptly.

But Rose and Russ dodged that question. In fact they did not know how to
explain just what a funeral was. But in watching the gardener replace
the rubber plant in the green tub, surrounded with fresh earth from the
green house, the little ones forgot everything else, even Bobo.

Bobo, just as soon as he could, went into his house and smelled all
around and finally lay down, his muzzle sticking out of the door.

"He looks unhappy," Rose said. "I guess he thought he wasn't going to
have any home at all when he saw you two in there with the rubber
plant."

"It was a good Christmas tree," was Margy's only reply to this.

"But we didn't get the candles to light it up," Mun Bun rejoined,
walking away hand in hand with Russ. "So how could it be a Christmas
tree if there weren't any candles?"

As Christmas Day grew closer there was less work done and more play
engaged in by everybody on the plantation. Christmas Eve there was a
beautiful display of fireworks on the front lawn of the big house, and
everybody from the quarters came to see it, as well as the white folks.
Even Mammy June came up from her cabin by the stream, walking with
difficulty, for she was lame, and sat in state on the porch "with de
w'ite folks" to see the fireworks.

The old woman had taken a strong liking to the six little Bunkers and
she made as much of them as she did of the thr