"Good-night, Martie," called a sweet voice down the stairway.
"Good-night, Rose dear; I thought you were asleep."
"Good-night, Martie," duetted the twins, in the shrillest of treble and
falsetto.
"Good-night, you rogues; go to sleep; you 'll wake baby."
"Dood-night, mummy," chirped a little voice from the adjoining room.
There was a shout of laughter from the twins.
"Shut up," growled March from the attic over the kitchen. "Good-night,
mother." His growl ended in a squeak, for March was at that interesting
period of his life indicated by a change of voice. At the sound, a
prolonged snicker from somewhere was answered by a corresponding giggle
from another-where.
"Now, children," said Mrs. Blossom, speaking up the stairway, "do be
quiet, or baby will be wide awake."
"Tum tiss me, mummy," piped the little voice a second time, with no
sound of sleep in it.
"Yes, darling, I 'll come;" as she turned to go into the bedroom
adjoining the kitchen, there was the sound of a jump overhead, a patter
of bare feet, a squabble on the stairs, and Budd and Cherry, the
irrepressible ten-year-old twins, tumbled into the room.
"I 'll haul those kids back to bed for you, mother," shouted March, and
flung himself out of bed to join the fray, while Rose was not behindhand
in making her appearance.
Mrs. Blossom came in with little May in her arms, and that was the
signal for a wholesale kissing-party in which May was hostess.
"Children, children, you 'll smother me!" laughed their mother. "Here,
sit down on the rug and warm your toes,--coming over those bare stairs
this cold night!" And down they sat, Rose and March, Budd and Cherry
and little May, in thick white and red flannel night-dresses and gray
flannel pajamas.
Budd coughed consumptively, and Cherry followed suit. March shivered and
shook like a small earthquake, and Rose looked up laughingly at her
mother.
"We know what that means, don't we, Martie," she said. "Shall I help?"
"No, no, dear,--in your bare feet!"
Mrs. Blossom took a lamp from the shelf over the fireplace, and, leaving
the five with their fifty toes turned and wriggling before the cheering
warmth of the blazing hickory logs, disappeared in the pantry.
"Oh, bully," said Budd, rubbing his flannel pajamas just over his
stomach; "I wish 't was a cold night every day, then we could have
molasses tea all the time, don't you, Cherry?"
"Mm," said Cherry, too full of the anticipated treat for articulate
speech.
"There 's nothing like it to warm up your insides," said March; "mother
's a brick to let us get up for it. She would n't, you know, if father
were at home."
"My tummy's told," piped May, frantically patting her chest in imitation
of Budd, and all the children shouted to see the wee four-year-old
maiden trying to manufacture a shiver in the glow of the cheerful fire.
Mrs. Blossom had never told her recipe for her "hot molasses tea;" but
it had been famed in the family for more than a generation. She had it
from her mother. The treat was always reserved for a bitterly cold
night, and the good things in it of which one had a taste--molasses,
white sugar, lemon-peel, butter, peppermint, boiled raisins, and
mysterious unknowns--were compounded with hot water into a
palate-tickling beverage.
When Mrs. Blossom reappeared, with a kettle sending forth a small cloud
of fragrant steam in one hand and a tray filled with tin cups in the
other, the delighted "Ohs" and "Ahs" repaid her for all her extra work
at the close of a busy, weary day.
Budd rolled over on the rug in his ecstasy, and Cherry was about to roll
on top of him, when March interfered, and order was restored.
As they sat there on the big, braided square of woollen rag-carpet,
sipping and ohing and ahing with supreme satisfaction, Mrs. Blossom
broached the subject of valentines.
"It's the first of February, children, and time to begin to make
valentines. You 're not going to forget the Doctor _this_ year, are
you?"
"No, indeed, Martie," said Rose. "He deserves the prettiest we can
make. I 've been thinking about it, and I 'm going to make him a
shaving-case, heart-shaped, with birch-bark covers, and if March will
decorate it for me, I think it will be lovely; will you, March?"
"Course I will; the Doctor 's a brick. I 'll tell you what, Martie, I
can pen and ink some of those spruces and birches that the Doctor was so
fond of last summer; how 'll that do?"
"Just the thing," said his mother; "I know it will please him. What are
you thinking, Cherry?" for the "other half" of Budd was gazing dreamily
into the fire, forgetting her tea in her revery.
"Fudge!" said Cherry, shortly. March and Rose laughed.
"Keep still making fun of Cherry," said Budd, ruffling at the sound; and
to emphasize his admonishing words, he dug his sharp elbow so suddenly
into March's ribs that some hot molasses tea flew from the cup which his
brother had just put to his mouth and spattered on his bare feet.
March deliberately set down his tin cup on the hearth near the fire
beside his brother's, and turned upon Budd.
Budd tried to dodge, but had no room. In a trice, March had his arms
around him, and was hugging him in a bear-like embrace. "Say you 're
sorry!" he demanded.
"Au-ow!"
"Say you 're sorry!" he roared at him, hugging harder.
"Au-ow-ee-ow!"
"Quick, or I 'll squeeze you some more!"
Budd was squirming and twisting like an eel.
"O-ee-wau-au-_Au!_"
"There," said March, releasing him and setting him down with a thump on
the rug; "I 'll teach you to poke me in the ribs that way and scald my
feet.--You 're game, though, old fellow," he added patronizingly, as he
heard a suspicious sniff from Cherry. "You and Cherry make a whole team
any day."
Cherry's sniff changed to a smile, for March did not condescend to
praise either of them very often.
"Well," she said meditatively, "I suppose it did sound funny to say
that, but I was thinking that if Budd would make me a little
heart-shaped box of birch-bark, I 'd make some maple-sugar fudge,--you
know, Martie, the kind with butternuts in it,--and that could be my
valentine for the Doctor."
"Why, that's a bright idea, Cherry," said Mrs. Blossom; and, "Bully for
you, Cherry," said Budd; "we'll begin to-morrow and crack the
butternuts."
"What will May do?" asked Mrs. Blossom, lifting the little girl, who was
already showing signs of being overcome with molasses tea and sleep.
May nestled in her mother's arms, leaned her head, running over with
golden curls, on her mother's breast, and murmured drowsily,--
"'Ittle tooties--tut with mummy's heart-tutter--tutter--tooties--tut--"
The blue-veined eyelids closed over the lovely eyes; and Mrs. Blossom,
holding up her finger to hush the children's mirth at May's inspired
utterance, carried her back into the bedroom.
One after another the children crept noiselessly upstairs, with a
whispered, "Good-night, Martie," and in ten minutes Mary Blossom knew
they were all in the land of dreams.