down and bust your breeches. Naw; gimme God evy
time."

"I like Santa Claus the best," declared Frances, "'cause he isn't
f'rever getting in your way, and hasn't any castor oil like Doctor
Sanford, and you don't f'rever have to be telling him you're sorry you
did what you did, and he hasn't all time got one eye on you either, like
God, and got to follow you 'round. And Santa Claus don't all time say,
Shet your eyes and open your mouth,' like Doctor Sanford, 'and poke out
your tongue.'"

"I like Doctor Sanford the best," said Florence, "'cause he 's my uncle,
and God and Santa Claus ain't kin to me."

"And the Bible say, 'Love your kin-folks,' Miss Cecilia 'splained--"

"I use to like my Uncle Doc' heap better 'n what I do now," went on the
little girl, heedless of Jimmy's interruption, "till I went with daddy
to his office one day. And what you reckon that man's got in his office?
He's got a dead man 'thout no meat nor clo'es on, nothing a tall but
just his bones."

"Was he a hant?" asked Billy. "I like the Major best--he 's got meat
on."

"Naw; he didn't have no sheet on--just bones," was the reply.

"No sheet on; no meat on!" chirruped Billy, glad of the rhyme.

"Was he a angel, Florence?" questioned Frances.

"Naw; he didn't have no harp and no wings neither."

"It must have been a skeleton," explained Lina.

"And Uncle Doc' just keeps that poor man there and won't let him go to
Heaven where dead folks b'longs."

"I spec' he wasn't a good man 'fore he died and got to go to the Bad
Place," suggested Frances.

"I'll betcher he never asked God to forgive him when he 'ceived his
papa and sassed his mama,"--this from Jimmy, "and Doctor Sanford's just
a-keeping old Satan from getting him to toast on a pitchfork."

"I hope they'll have a Christmas tree at Sunday-School next Christmas,"
said Frances, harking back, "and I hope I'll get a heap o' things like
I did last Christmas. Poor little Tommy Knott he's so skeered he wasn't
going to get nothing at all on the tree so he got him a great, big,
red apple an' he wrote on a piece o' paper 'From Tommy Knott to Tommy
Knott,' and tied it to the apple and put it on the tree for hi'self."

"Let's ask riddles," suggested Lina.

"All right," shouted Frances, "I'm going to ask the first."

"Naw; you ain't neither," objected Jimmy. "You all time got to ask the
first riddle. I'm going to ask the first one--

"'Round as a biscuit, busy as a bee,
Prettiest