s."

"Just as good and kind as if he was our own papa," Gracie said, with a
sweet silvery laugh.

"The dear, grateful darlings!" exclaimed the captain, his tone half
tremulous with feeling. "I sometimes fear I am almost too indulgent; but
it is such a dear delight to give them pleasure."

"And I don't believe it does them the least harm, so long as you do not
indulge them in any wrong doing," said Violet. "Love never hurts
anybody."

"Merry Christmas, my darlings," he called to them. "Did Santa Claus fill
your stockings?"

"Oh merry, merry Christmas, papa!" they answered. "Yes, sir, Santa
Claus or somebody did, and gave us lovely things. We're very much
obliged to him."

As they spoke the door into their little sitting-room opened and Max put
in his head, crying in his turn, "Merry Christmas to you all--papa and
Mamma Vi, Lulu and Gracie."

A chorus of merry Christmases answered him; then Lulu asked, "What did
Santa Claus put in your stocking, Maxie?"

"A good deal: about as much as could be crammed into it; some handsome
neckties, candies and nuts and a gold pencil."

"Very nice," commented Lulu, and she and Grace, both talking at once,
gave a gleeful account of their discoveries in searching their
stockings.

They had hardly finished their narrative when a glad shout from the
nursery interrupted them.

"There! little Elsie has found her stocking, I do believe," said Lulu,
starting up to a sitting posture that she might look through the open
door into the next room. As she did so a tiny toddling figure clothed in
a white night dress, and with a well filled stocking in its arms emerged
from the nursery door and ran across the room to the bedside, crying
gleefully, "See mamma, papa, Elsie got."

"What have you got pet?" asked her father, picking her up and setting
her in the bed. "There, pull out the things and let papa and mamma see
what they are."

"Mayn't we come and see too?" asked the other children.

"Yes," he said, "you can come and peep in at the door, but first put on
your warm slippers and dressing gowns, that you may not take cold."

Baby Elsie was a merry, demonstrative little thing, and it was great fun
for them all to watch her and hear her shouts of delight as she came
upon one treasure after another;--tiny, gaily dressed dolls of both
sexes, and other toys suited to her years.

It did not take her very long to empty the stocking, and then the
captain said to the older ones, "Now you