Project Gutenberg's On Christmas Day in the Morning, by Grace S. Richmond

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Title: On Christmas Day in the Morning

Author: Grace S. Richmond

Illustrator: Charles M. Relyea

Release Date: December 26, 2006 [EBook #20187]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE MORNING ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

[Illustration: "'I HAVEN'T GIVEN YOU ANY CHRISTMAS PRESENT.
WILL--I--DO?'"]

On
Christmas Day
in the Morning

_By_
GRACE S. RICHMOND

Illustrated by
CHARLES M. RELYEA

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
MCMXI

COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY
THE RIDGWAY-THAYER COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

* * * * *

Illustrations

"'I haven't given you any Christmas present. Will--I--do?'" _Frontispiece_

"Stumbling over their own feet and bundles ... the crew poured into the
warm kitchen"

"'The children!' she was saying. 'They--they--John--they must be _here_'"

"'Merry Christmas, mammy and daddy!'"

* * * * *

On Christmas Day in the Morning

And all the angels in heaven do sing,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
And all the bells on earth do ring,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

--OLD SONG.

That Christmas Day virtually began a whole year beforehand, with a
red-hot letter written by Guy Fernald to his younger sister, Nan, who
had been married to Samuel Burnett just two and one-half years. The
letter was read aloud by Mrs. Burnett to her husband at the breakfast
table, the second day after Christmas. From start to finish it was
upon one subjec