erything Christmasy like I like.
She's been telling us about when she was a little girl."

Dorothea's feet twisted around each other and her hands were laid
palm to palm as her body swayed backward and forward in rhythmic
movement. "They go out in the woods and cut cart-loads of holly and
mistletoe and pine and Christmas-trees, and dress the house, and the
fires roar up all the chimneys, and they kill the pigs--"

Channing sat upright and rubbed his eyes. "They don't kill the pigs
at Christmas. She said they kill them when the persimmons get ripe."

"Well, they're killed and you eat them Christmas. They put a little
one on the table with an apple in its mouth. And they pick out the
fattest turkeys and ducks and geese and chickens; and they go to the
smoke-house and punch and poke the hams and things; and the oysters
come from the river; and Mammy Malaprop comes up from the gate, where
she lives now, and helps make the cakes and the, pies and
plum-puddings and beaten biscuits; and Cousin Claudia says when she
was a little girl Mammy Malaprop always gave her some of the
Christmas cake to bake in egg-shells. I wish I could see somebody
make a cake. And Christmas Eve they make egg-nog, and Uncle Bushrod
makes the apple toddy two weeks before." She turned to her uncle.
"Why don't you go down there, Uncle Winthrop? I bet you'd get
Christmas in your bones if you did."

"I am very sure of it." Laine fixed Dorothea more firmly on his lap.
"There is only one reason in the world why I don't go."

"What's that? We're going away, and you will be all alone if you
don't. Can't he come, Cousin Claudia? He'd love it. I know he
would."

"I don't." Claudia moved her chair farther from the firelight.
"Christmas at Elmwood would be punishment for a city man. We are
much too primitive and old-fashioned. He would prefer New York."

"Would you?" Dorothea's arms were around her uncle's neck, and her
head nodded at his. "Would you?"

"I would not." Laine's voice was a little queer. "The punishment is
all at this end. I would rather spend Christmas at Elmwood than
anywhere on earth. But your Cousin Claudia will not let me,
Dorothea."

"Won't you really?" Dorothea slipped from his lap, and, with hands
on the arms of Claudia's chair, gazed anxiously in her eyes. "He'll
be all alone if you don't. Please ask him, Cousin Claudia! You said
yourself there was always so much company at Elmwood that one more
never mat