"I _won't_ stay in bed all day Christmas!" she gave out.
"Stay in bed!" echoed Mis' Moran. "Why on this earth should you stay in
bed?"
"Well, if we get up, then it's Christmas and you can't stop it!" little
Emily triumphed.
When they told Pep, the minister's son, after a long preparation by
story and other gradual approach, and a Socratic questioning cleverly
winning damning admissions from Pep, he looked up in his father's face
thoughtfully:--
"If they ain't no Christ's birthday this year, is it a lie that Christ
was born?" he demanded.
And secretly the children took counsel with one another: Would Buff
Miles, the church choir tenor, take them out after dark on Christmas
Eve, to sing church choir serenades at folks' gates, or would he not?
And when they thought that he might not, because this would be
considered Christmas celebration and would only make the absence of
present-giving the more conspicuous, as in the case of the Sunday
schools themselves, they faced still another theological quandary: For
if it was true that Christ was born, then Christmas was his birthday;
and if Christmas was his birthday, wasn't it wicked not to pay any
attention?
Alone of them all, little Tab Winslow rejoiced. His brothers and sisters
made the time tearful with questionings as to the effect on Santa
Claus, and how would they get word to him, and would it be Christmas in
the City, and why couldn't they move there, and other matters denoting
the reversal of this their earth. But Tab slipped out the kitchen door,
to the corner of the barn, where the great turkey gobbler who had been
named held his empire trustingly.
"Oh, Theophilus Thistledown," said Tab to him, "you're the only one in
this town that's goin' to have a Christmas. You ain't got to be et."