Christmas Every Day | Page 8

little girl could see that the place was full of people, crammed and jammed, and they were all awfully excited, and kept yelling, "Down with the traitress!" "Away with the renegade!" "Shame on the little sneak!" till it was worse than the turkeys, ten times.
She knew that they meant her, and she tried to explain that she just had to promise, and that if they had been in her place they would have promised too; and of course they could do as they pleased about keeping her word, but she was going to keep it, anyway, and never, never, never eat another piece of turkey either at Thanksgiving or at Christmas.
"Very well, then," says an old lady, who looked like her grandmother, and then began to have a crown on, and to turn into Queen Victoria, "what can we have?"
"Well," says the other little girl, "you can have oyster soup."
"What else?"
"And you can have cranberry sauce."
"What else?"
"You can have mashed potatoes, and Hubbard squash, and celery, and turnip, and cauliflower."
"What else?"
"You can have mince-pie, and pandowdy, and plum-pudding."
"And not a thing on the list," says the Queen, "that doesn't go with turkey! Now you see."
The papa stopped.
"Go on," said the little girl.
"There isn't any more."
The little girl turned round, got up on her knees, took him by the shoulders, and shook him fearfully. "Now, then," she said, while the papa let his head wag, after the shaking, like a Chinese mandarin's, and it was a good thing he did not let his tongue stick out. "Now, will you go on? What did the people eat in place of turkey?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know, you awful papa! Well, then, what did the little girl eat?"
"She?" The papa freed himself, and made his preparation to escape. "Why she--oh, she ate goose. Goose is tenderer than turkey, anyway, and more digestible; and there isn't so much of it, and you can't overeat yourself, and have bad--"
"Dreams!" cried the little girl.
"Trances," said the papa, and she began to chase him all round the room.

THE PONY ENGINE AND THE PACIFIC EXPRESS.
Christmas Eve, after the children had hung up their stockings and got all ready for St. Nic, they climbed up on the papa's lap to kiss him good-night, and when they both got their arms round his neck, they said they were not going to bed till he told them a Christmas story. Then he saw that he would have to mind, for they were awfully severe with him, and always made him do exactly what they told him; it was the way they had brought him up. He tried his best to get out of it for a while; but after they had shaken him first this side, and then that side, and pulled him backward and forward till he did not know where he was, he began to think perhaps he had better begin. The first thing he said, after he opened his eyes, and made believe he had been asleep, or something, was, "Well, what did I leave off at?" and that made them just perfectly boiling, for they understood his tricks, and they knew he was trying to pretend that he had told part of the story already; and they said he had not left off anywhere because he had not commenced, and he saw it was no use. So he commenced.
"Once there was a little Pony Engine that used to play round the Fitchburg Depot on the side tracks, and sleep in among the big locomotives in the car-house--"
The little girl lifted her head from the papa's shoulder, where she had dropped it. "Is it a sad story, papa?"
"How is it going to end?" asked the boy.
"Well, it's got a moral," said the papa.
"Oh, all right, if it's got a moral," said the children; they had a good deal of fun with the morals the papa put to his stories. The boy added, "Go on," and the little girl prompted, "Car-house."
The papa said, "Now every time you stop me I shall have to begin all over again." But he saw that this was not going to spite them any, so he went on: "One of the locomotives was its mother, and she had got hurt once in a big smash-up, so that she couldn't run long trips any more. She was so weak in the chest you could hear her wheeze as far as you could see her. But she could work round the depot, and pull empty cars in and out, and shunt them off on the side tracks; and she was so anxious to be useful that all the other engines respected her, and they were very kind to the little Pony Engine on her account, though it was always getting in the way, and under their wheels,