this was the first Christmas morning since she could remember that she had not risen very early, before the sun itself, bobbed her head into every occupied bedroom in the house and called out an explosive "Merry Christmas!" She wiped the tears from her eyes with a corner of the sheet. Her thoughts descended to the picture of the empty sitting-room below. "Just as if our Christmas tree had been sick and died," she sighed.
She breakfasted at eight—or tried to. "Don't seem to have any appetite, Delia," she said in explanation of the untouched pile of toast and hardly disturbed omelet. "I declare," she added, when Delia had gone out, "I believe I'm not so well to-day. I don't know as I'm ever going to get up." Then she folded her hands again in their listless fashion on top of the white sheet, neatly folded back over the blanket. Her eyes began their daily pilgrimage up and down the hilly track made by a crack in the white plaster overhead.
Thus she was lying at nine o'clock when the Harvey children and grandchildren, having assembled in the hall below, crawled stealthily up the stairs, suppressing whispers, forefingers pressed upon lips, eyes a-twinkle, and stood ready all in a huddled bunch outside mother's closed
