ither run nor hop,
With weary months of leisure.

"So Peggy Owen Carter comes,
With joyous Christmas greeting,
A carol gay, she softly hums,
Joy's long, if time is fleeting."

"What a nice poem," said Peggy, with a sigh of envy.

"Yes, isn't it?" said Diana.

"I wish I could write poetry like that," said Peggy. "I just wrote one
verse. It's in my present to you."

"Oh, have you brought me a present?" Diana said, in delight.

"Yes, mother and Alice and I have each given you one, and there is this
one from Angel Hen-Farrell."

"An egg!" Diana cried. "Father said I could have an egg for my supper.
I'll have it dropped on toast. I couldn't have any of the Christmas
dinner, except the oyster soup."

"Oh, you poor darling!" said Peggy.

"It was very good soup," said Diana, "and I was so happy to have Peggy
Owen Carter and the rest of my presents; and the carols, last night,
were so lovely!"

"Carols last night?" the children cried. "We didn't hear any."

"The Christmas Waits came and sang under my window. I could see them
from my bed. The leader carried a torch so the others could see to read
their books. He had on a red cloak. And they sang such beautiful
carols!"

"Oh, why didn't they come out and sing to us?" said Alice.

"You are pretty far out of town. I think they only sang to sick people
and old people. They went up to the hospital, and they asked father for
a list of his patients who were not too sick to be disturbed by the
singing."

"Well, anyway, I'd rather have been well than to have heard the carols,"
said Peggy. "You poor dear, I can't get over your being in bed on
Christmas Day."

But Diana's eyes were shining. "I shouldn't have had Tom's poem if I had
been well," she said, "or the Christmas egg. Even if one is sick,
Christmas is the happiest time in all the year."

CHAPTER XV

THE GREAT STORM

That was a winter of great storms. They began in November, and the snow
piled up higher and higher, so that when one went down to the shops, one
walked between walls of snow. The oldest inhabitant remembered nothing
like it.

"It seems like going up mountains," Peggy said to Alice, one day when
they came to a house where the sidewalk had not been shoveled out.

It was a wonderful winter for children, for such coasting and
tobogganing had never been known. It was not such a good winter for
creatures who wore fur and feathers. Lady Janet, who had never known any