ut, helping with the many last things,
Peggy let down her braids and put on her new crimson shirtwaist, and
stood with her mother in the front doorway, for it was Christmas Eve at
last, and the station 'bus was rattling up with the first homecomers,
Arna and Hazen.

Then there were voices ringing up and down the dark street, and there
were happy tears in the mother's eyes, and Arna had taken Peggy's face
in her two soft-gloved hands and lifted it up and kissed it, and Hazen
had swung his little sister up in the air just as of old. Peggy's tired
feet were dancing for joy. She was helping Arna take off her things, was
carrying her bag upstairs--would have carried Hazen's heavy grip, too,
only her father took it from her.

"Set the kettle to boil, Peggy," directed her mother; "then run upstairs
and see if Arna wants anything. We'll wait supper till the rest come."

The rest came on the nine o'clock train, such a load of them--the big,
bluff brother-in-law, Mabel, plump and laughing, as always, Minna, elfin
and bright-eyed, and sleepy Baby Robin. Such hugging, such a hubbub of
baby talk! How many things there seemed to be to do for those precious
babies right away!

Peggy was here and there and everywhere. Everything was in joyous
confusion. Supper was to be set on, too. While the rest ate, Peggy sat
by, holding Robin, her own little nephew, and managing at the same time
to pick up the things--napkin, knife, spoon, bread--that Minna,
hilarious with the late hour, flung from her high chair.

It seemed as if they would never be all stowed away for the night. Some
of them wanted pitchers of warm water, some of them pitchers of cold,
and the alcohol stove must be brought up for heating the baby's milk at
night. The house was crowded, too. Peggy had given up her room to Hazen,
and slept on a cot in the sewing room with Minna.

The cot had been enlarged by having three chairs piled with pillows, set
along the side. But Minna preferred to sleep in the middle of the cot,
or else across it, her restless little feet pounding at Peggy's ribs;
and Peggy was unused to any bedfellow.

She lay long awake thinking proudly of the children, of Hazen, the tall
brother, with his twinkling eyes, his drolleries, his teasing; of
graceful Arna who dressed so daintily, talked so cleverly, and had been
to college. Arna was going to send Peggy to college, too--it was so good
of Arna! But for all Peggy's admiration for Arna, it was Mabel, the