was very particular--as if I couldn't stone raisins right!
The airs Felicity puts on about her cooking just make me sick,"
concluded Cecily wrathfully.

"It's a pity she doesn't make a mistake in cooking once in a while
herself," I said. "Then maybe she wouldn't think she knew so much more
than other people."

All parcels that came in the mail from distant friends were taken charge
of by Aunts Janet and Olivia, not to be opened until the great day of
the feast itself. How slowly the last week passed! But even watched pots
will boil in the fulness of time, and finally Christmas day came, gray
and dour and frost-bitten without, but full of revelry and rose-red
mirth within. Uncle Roger and Aunt Olivia and the Story Girl came over
early for the day; and Peter came too, with his shining, morning face,
to be hailed with joy, for we had been afraid that Peter would not be
able to spend Christmas with us. His mother had wanted him home with
her.

"Of course I ought to go," Peter had told me mournfully, "but we won't
have turkey for dinner, because ma can't afford it. And ma always cries
on holidays because she says they make her think of father. Of course
she can't help it, but it ain't cheerful. Aunt Jane wouldn't have cried.
Aunt Jane used to say she never saw the man who was worth spoiling her
eyes for. But I guess I'll have to spend Christmas at home."

At the last moment, however, a cousin of Mrs. Craig's in Charlottetown
invited her for Christmas, and Peter, being given his choice of going or
staying, joyfully elected to stay. So we were all together, except Sara
Ray, who had been invited but whose mother wouldn't let her come.

"Sara Ray's mother is a nuisance," snapped the Story Girl. "She just
lives to make that poor child miserable, and she won't let her go to the
party tonight, either."

"It is just breaking Sara's heart that she can't," said Cecily
compassionately. "I'm almost afraid I won't enjoy myself for thinking of
her, home there alone, most likely reading the Bible, while we're at the
party."

"She might be worse occupied than reading the Bible," said Felicity
rebukingly.

"But Mrs. Ray makes her read it as a punishment," protested Cecily.
"Whenever Sara cries to go anywhere--and of course she'll cry
tonight--Mrs. Ray makes her read seven chapters in the Bible. I wouldn't
think that would make her very fond of it. And I'll not be able to talk
the party over with Sara afterwards--and that's half th