noon
they had tasted the Christmas soup and seen it given out; they had put
a finishing touch to the snow man 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 fire-light, 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. If a fellow wants to go anywhere, it's somebody
else's _turn_. If old Brown sends a basket of grapes, it's share and
share alike; all the ten must taste, and then there's about a grape
and a half for each. If anybody calls or comes to luncheon, there are
a whole lot of brats swarming about, looking