see if his house was turned into that sort of
fool's paradise another year; and they had a light supper, and pretty
early everybody went to bed cross.

Here the little girl pounded her papa in the back, again.

"Well, what now? Did I say pigs?"

"You made them _act_ like pigs."

"Well, didn't they?"

"No matter; you oughtn't to put it into a story."

"Very well, then, I'll take it all out."

Her father went on:

The little girl slept very heavily, and she slept very late, but she
was wakened at last by the other children dancing round her bed with
their stockings full of presents in their hands.

"What is it?" said the little girl, and she rubbed her eyes and tried
to rise up in bed.

"Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!" they all shouted, and waved their
stockings.

"Nonsense! It was Christmas yesterday."

Her brothers and sisters just laughed. "We don't know about that. It's
Christmas to-day, anyway. You come into the library and see."

Then all at once it flashed on the little girl that the Fairy was
keeping her promise, and her year of Christmases was beginning. She
was dreadfully sleepy, but she sprang up like a lark--a lark that had
overeaten itself and gone to bed cross--and darted into the library.
There it was again! Books, and portfolios, and boxes of stationery,
and breastpins--

"You needn't go over it all, papa; I guess I can remember just what was
there," said the little girl.

Well, and there was the Christmas-tree blazing away, and the family
picking out their presents, but looking pretty sleepy, and her father
perfectly puzzled, and her mother ready to cry. "I'm sure I don't see
how I'm to dispose of all these things," said her mother, and her
father said it seemed to him they had had something just like it the
day before, but he supposed he must have dreamed it. This struck the
little girl as the best kind of a joke; and so she ate so much candy
she didn't want any breakfast, and went round carrying presents, and
had turkey and cranberry for dinner, and then went out and coasted,
and came in with a--

"Papa!"

"Well, what now?"

"What did you promise, you forgetful thing?"

"Oh! oh yes!"

Well, the next day, it was just the same thing over again, but
everybody getting crosser; and at the end of a week's time so many
people had lost their tempers that you could pick up lost tempers
anywhere; they perfectly strewed t