"Hello, Amy! Merry Christmas, everybody!"

Amzi walked toward Lois. "Phil, this is your mother." Mrs. Hastings
glided from her post by the hearth until she stood between Phil and
Lois, who stood with her back to the center table, the tips of her
fingers resting upon it. Her face betrayed no apprehensions. For the
moment she was out of the scene and the contest lay between Phil and her
aunts.

"Phil, this is not the place for you! Go into the other room at once,"
said Mrs. Hastings, swallowing a sob.

Amzi struck a match and lighted a cigar with his habitual three puffs.
Across the flame he saw Phil sweeping the group with her eyes. She stood
erect, her hands in her muff to which particles of snow clung where it
had fallen in her encounter with the boys at the gate. The crisp air had
brightened her cheeks. She wore that look of unconcern for which she had
been distinguished as a child. She moved her head slightly, to avoid the
figure of the intercepting aunt, and met for an instant her mother's
indifferent, unappealing gaze. Her intuitions grasped the situation and
weighed its nice points. Phil had rarely in her life been surprised and
she showed no surprise now.

"It's rather cold, isn't it, Phil?" Lois remarked.

"Chilly in here--rather!" said Phil in the same key.

"Phil!" thundered the aunts.

"Christmas is nicer with snow. I hate green Christmases," observed Lois,
who had not changed her position.

"I've never seen but two," replied Phil, as readily as though the
dialogue had been rehearsed; "and I hated them." Then, drawing her hand
from her muff, she flung it out in a burlesque of the amateur
recitationist:--

"O pray, upon my Christmas morn,
Let snow the leaf-shorn boughs adorn.

"How _is_ that, Amy! A little worse than my worst?" She stepped round
her Aunt Kate, shook hands with her mother, then upon second thought
dropped her muff, seized both her hands, and kissed her.

"Were you all really just about going? I'm late! Made nine stops on the
way, took a brief sleigh-ride with Captain Wilson, ate too much
butter-scotch at the Bartletts', and here we are!"

She pushed a chair toward the hearth so violently that the castors
screeched and her Aunt Kate jumped to avoid being run over.

"Why not sit down, mamma? Amy, where's my present? Here's me to you."

She picked up her muff, drew out a parcel tied with red ribbon, with a
bit of mistletoe tucked under the bow-knot, and tossed it to Amzi.