-gold lace and green silk, but it was
old and dowdy; and, Momsy, her cheeks were just as red! I was on the
stepladder tackin' up the Bethlehem picture, Sisty was standin' on the
high-chair hanging up the star, and Buddy's arms were full of gray moss
that he was wrappin' round your chair. But we were just as polite to her
as we could be, and asked her to take a seat. And we all thought she sat
down; but she went, Momsy, and no one saw her go. Buddy says she's a
witch. She left that flower-pot of sweet-basil on the table. I s'pose
she brought it for a present. Do you think that we'd better send for her
to come back, Momsy?"

"No, daughter, I think not. No doubt she had her own reasons for going,
and she may come back. And are the rest all coming?"

"Yes'm; but we had a time gettin' Miss Guyosa to come. She says she's a
First Family, an' she never mixes. But I told her so were we, and we
mixed. And then I said that if she'd come she could sit at one end o'
the table and carve the ham, while you'd do the turkey. But she says
Buddy ought to do the turkey. But she's comin'. And, Momsy, the turkey
is a perfect beauty. We put pecans in him. Miss Guyosa gave us the
receipt and the nuts, too. Her cousin sent 'em to her from his
plantation. And did you notice the paper roses in the moss festoons,
Momsy? She made those. She has helped us fix up _a lot_. She made all
the Easter flowers on St. Joseph's altar at the Cathedral, too, and--"

A rap at the door announcing a first guest sent the little cook bounding
to the kitchen, while Ethel rushed into her mother's room, her mouth
full of pins and her sash on her arm.

She had dressed the three little ones a half-hour ago; and Conrad, who
had also made an early toilet, declared that they had all three walked
round the dinner table thirty-nine times since their appearance in the
"dining-room." When he advanced to do the honors, the small procession
toddling single file behind him, somehow it had not occurred to him that
he might encounter Miss Penny, the canary lady, standing in a dainty old
dress of yellow silk just outside the door, nor, worse still, that she
should bear in her hands a tiny cage containing a pair of young
canaries.

He said afterwards that "everything would have passed off all right if
it hadn't been for the twins." Of course he had forgotten that he had
himself been the first one to compare Miss Penny to a canary.

By the time the little black-eyed woman had fli