voices of the
children, I threw on a dressing-gown and hastened to the room
appropriated to their patron saint, which I entered at one door just as
little Eva Dudley appeared at another. Without being in the least a
beauty, Eva has the most charming face I know; merry and bright as
Puck's, or as her own life, which from its earliest dawn has been joyous
as a bird's carol. She gazed now with eager delight on the toys
exhibited by her brothers and sisters, without, apparently, one thought
of herself, till Robert said, "But see here, Eva, look at your own."

As her eyes rested on the large baby-house, with its folding-doors open
to display the furniture of the parlors, and the two dolls, mother and
daughter, seated at a table on which stood a neat china breakfasting
set, she clasped her dimpled hands in silent ecstasy for half a minute,
then rising to her utmost height on her rosy little toes, she exclaimed,
"Oh, isn't I a happy little woman!"

Dear Eva! a little _girl's_ heart would not have seemed to her large
enough to contain such a rapture.

Our party has been augmented since breakfast by the arrival of several
families of Donaldsons--some of whom live at too great a distance for
visits at any other time than Christmas, when all who stand in any
conceivable, or I was about to say inconceivable, degree of relationship
to the Donaldsons of Donaldson Manor, are expected to be here. Among
this host of uncles and aunts and cousins, I was really grateful for my
own prefix of aunt, and I heard Mr. Arlington whisper a request to
Robert to call him uncle--a title to which I have no doubt he would
willingly make good his claim.

In the midst of this general hilarity, the religious character of the
day was not forgotten, and all the family and some of the visitors
attended the morning services in the church. We know that there are
those who, doubting the testimony on which the Christian world has
agreed to observe the 25th of December as the birthday into our mortal
life of the world's Saviour, and the era from which man may date his
hopes of a happy immortality, consider the religious observances of this
day a sheer superstition. On such a controversy I could say but little,
and I should be very unwilling so say that little here; but I would ask
if it can be wrong in the opinion of any--nay, if it be not right, very
right, in the opinion of all--to celebrate once in the year an event so
solemn and so joyous to our race; an