so that the children were rarely in the house, and her preparations went on finely. The little cakes were baked and trimmed, and truly they were little beauties. They were hidden, with all the other surprises, in the big, green paste-board box on the top shelf of the cupboard. When the children were safely out of the way, Mary Ellen sometimes climbed up in a chair and lifted it down. She patted the cakes and sniffed at the luscious oranges and great, rosy apples, and laughed to think what fun it would be to be putting one in her own stocking.
“It would be like Christmas back East, if only there was a little cedary smell mixed with the other smells; but I don’t suppose there
ever was any cedar out here.” Then, hearing the children coming, she would hastily put the cover on and return the box to its place.
The day before Christmas, Mrs. Metzger drove over with the promised mittens and stockings. She brought also a fat hen and a can of peaches, which she laughingly told Mary Ellen she could put into her own stocking.
On Christmas Eve the children went early to bed, for they had been to the post-office at Prairie Dog Town that morning, and brought back a letter saying that Santa Claus would surely visit them this year,
Mary Ellen and her father sat, one on each side of the stove, waiting in silence for the children to go ta sleep; and long after their regular breathing reported the children in Slumberland, they continued to sit, neither speaking, each busy with thoughts of other days
Then there came a knock at the door. The man called, “Who's there?” and hastily struck a light. There was no answer; and when he opened the door a small tree of mountain spruce, which completely blocked the doorway, fell forward into the room.
When he lifted it up, the sweet, pungent odor so overcame Mary Ellen that she threw herself face foremost on the bed and cried, which was a very unusual thing for her to do.
When her father called to her, she quickly jumped up to assist him. There was also on the door-step a great box of presents, and dozens of tapers with which to light the tree. When the box was opened, Mary Ellen could scarcely stifle screams of delight as she viewed the wonderful tops, drums, guns, boats, and balls—the dolls and dishes such as Mary Ellen had sometimes seen in the shop windows, but had never possessed.
There were many useful presents, too; but when one imposing-looking bundle, bearing the address, “To the little mother, with love, from Mrs. William,” was opened, and proved to be a doll more than two feet long, having real hair and opening and shutting its eyes and talking,—“really and truly talking,’—it was then that Mary Ellen was too overcome for words. It seemed to be a “doll day” at Lonesome Ranch, for good old Mrs. Metzger had included with her gifts a cunning little brown-eyed, brown-haired doll for Charlotte, and a funny-looking boy doll who struck together little brass cymbals fastened to his hands whenever you pressed his stomach.
The tree was dressed and lighted. The children were wakened, and it was hard for them to realize that they were not still dreaming of Santa Claus and fairyland.
Long after Mary Ellen had crept tired to bed, with “Cinderella Josephine” clasped close in her arms, she bethought her of the presents in the pasteboard box,
“I ‘ll keep them for the morning; and, most likely, if we had n’t been going to have them, we should never have bad this lovely Christmas Eve: I'll always think it was good Mr. and Mrs, William—I can’t call him Crazy Bill any more—who brought the tree and the beautiful presents—was n’t it, Cinderella Josephine?” And Cinderella Josephine, when her little mother touched the right button, said, “Yes, mama,” and then they both went sound asleep.
