and his small
eyes actually crossed in the earnestness of his work, which consisted
in snatching chances at the stuffing with a table-spoon and a cup of
bran.

[Illustration: THE LITTLE SLATTERYS.]

"I hear them," exclaimed Mabel, springing down from the window, her
nose a spectacle.

Now away down stairs flew all the four, who had been wriggling for an
hour in the bay window.

"Shut the door, Chrissy," nodded the dignified Alice to Chrissy, whose
eyes had marvellously uncrossed, and whose tongue had disappeared at
Mabel's announcement. Chrissy drew down his knees, and obeyed. "Spoon
up the bran you spilled, Chrissy," directed Alice, calmly stitching at
her pin-cushion.

The reluctant Chrissy's obedience was less of a success this time. The
noise of a great commotion in the hall below reached the quiet
chamber. Chrissy, with his face twisted inquiringly first over one
shoulder and then over the other, spooned at random.

The sounds came nearer. Through the hurrying of eager feet and the
clamor of glad voices was a tap-tapping on the wainscot and a thumping
on the oaken stairs.

"May be it's St. Nicholas?" questioned Chrissy, spooning very
unsteadily, his eyes and his ears wide open.

"No; it isn't time for him. He's doing up his pack now, and they are
harnessing his reindeer."

"Who? Where?"

The door burst open, and in tumbled four children and the little pine
tree. Chrissy darted forward, shrieking with delight, and fell
headlong among the family group.

"What a pretty pine!" said Alice, calmly locking up the pin-cushion
in her work-box.

Now Ely, still in her fur cap and sack, rushed in excitedly among her
struggling brothers and sisters, and rescued the pine tree.

"Sitting up so piminy there, Alice Eliot, your two hands folded, and
the beautiful Christmas tree just going to destruction, with those
four wretched little thunderbolts pitching into it!"

Ely was purple with wrath.

The four little Eliots were on their feet again in a trice, giggling
and nudging each other behind the excited Ely.

"It's a truly lovely pine," remarked Alice, composedly, shaking some
bran from her skirt.

"You might have said so, if you had gone round looking for them in the
freezing cold, as I did, and then couldn't find one fit to be seen,
except--"

"Alice, didn't I tell her so?" interrupted Mabel, pulling Chrissy's
fat fingers away from Ely's pocket just as they were about to grasp
the protruding heels of a