y, she shook her sides, and, said she, 'Sing a song o' sixpence.'"

"That was as sensible a speech as thee could expect from that quarter."

"O, grandma, you don't care anything about my dream, or I could go on and
describe the wedding-cake; how she put sage in it, and pepper, and
mustard, and baked it on top of one of our registers. What do you suppose
made me dream such a queer thing?"

"Thee was probably thinking of thy mother's wedding."

"O, Christmas is going to be splendided than ever, this year," said
Dotty; "isn't it grandma? Did you have any Christmases when you
were young?"

"O, yes; but we didn't make much account of Christmas in those days."

"Why, grandma! I knew you lived on bean porridge, but I s'posed you had
something to eat Christmas!"

"O, sometimes I had a little saucer-pie, sweetened with molasses, and the
crust made of raised dough."

"Poor, dear grandma!"

"I remember my father used to put a great backlog on the fire Christmas
morning, as large as the fireplace would hold; and that was all the
celebration we ever had."

"Didn't you have Christmas presents?"

"No, Alice; not so much as a brass thimble."

"Poor grandma! I shouldn't think you would have wanted to live! Didn't
anybody love you?" said Dotty, putting her fingers under Mrs. Read's cap,
and smoothing her soft gray hair; "why, I love every hair of your head."

"I am glad thee does, child; but that doesn't take much love, for thee
knows I haven't a great deal of hair."

"But, grandma, how could you live without Christmas trees and things?"

"I was happy enough, Alice."

"But you'd have been a great deal happier, grandma, if you'd had a Santa
Claus! It's so nice to believe what isn't true!"

"Ah! does thee think so? There was one thing I believed when I was a very
little girl, and it was not true. I believed the cattle knelt at
midnight on Christmas eve."

"Knelt, grandma? For what?"

"Because our blessed Lord was born in a manger."

"But they didn't know that. Cows can't read the Bible."

"It was an idle story, of course, like the one about Mother Knowles. A
man who worked at our house, Israel Grossman, told it to me, and I
thought it was true."

Here grandma gazed into the coals again. She could see Israel Grossman
sitting on a stump, whittling a stick and puffing away at a short pipe.

"Well, children," said she, "I have talked to you long enough about
things that are past and gone. On the whole, I don't say t