across the room. As early as yesterday the extra leaves had been
brought from the pantry, and we had all taken part in fitting them
together. Not to disturb the larger preparation, our supper and
breakfast had been served in the kitchen. And even now to eat in the
kitchen, if the table is set before the window and there is a flurry
of snow outside, is to feel pleasantly the proximity of a great
occasion.
The Christmas table was so long and there were so many of us, that a
few of the chairs were caught in a jog of the wall and had no proper
approach except by crawling on hands and knees beneath it. Each year
it was customary to request my maiden aunt, a prim lady who bordered
on seventy and had limbs instead of legs, to undertake the passage.
Each year we listened for the jest and shouted with joy when the
request was made. There were other jests, too, that were dear to us
and grew better with the years. My aunt was reproved for boisterous
conduct, and although she sat as silent as a mouse, she was always
warned against the cider. Each year, also, as soon as the dessert
appeared, there was a demand that a certain older cousin tell the
Judge West story. But the jest lay in the demand instead of in the
story, for although there was a clamor of applause, the story was
never told and it teases me forever. Then another cousin, who
journeyed sometimes to New York, usually instructed us in the latest
manner of eating an orange in the metropolis. But we disregarded his
fashionable instruction, and peeled ours round and round.
The dinner itself was a prodigious feast. The cook-stove must have
rested and panted for a week thereafter. Before long, Annie got so red
bringing in turkeys and cranberry sauce--countless plates heaped and
toppling with vegetables and meats--that one might think she herself
was in process to become a pickled beet and would presently enter on a
platter.
In the afternoon we rested, but at night there was a dance, for which
my maiden aunt played the piano. The dear good soul, whose old brown
fingers were none too limber, had skill that scarcely mounted to the
speed of a polka, but she was steady at a waltz. There was one
tune--bink a bunk bunk, bink a bunk bunk--that went around and around
with an agreeable monotony even when the player nodded. There was a
legend in the family that once she fell asleep in the performance, and
that the dancers turned down the lights and left the room; to her
amazement when presently she awoke, for she thought she had outsat the
party.
My brother and I had not advanced to the trick of dancing and we built
up our blocks in the corner of the room in order that the friskier
dancers might kick them over as they passed. Chief in the performance
was the Judge West cousin who, although whiskered almost into middle
age, had a merry heart and knew how to play with children. Sometimes,
by consent, we younger fry sat beneath the piano, which was of an old
square pattern, and worked the pedals for my aunt, in order that her
industry might be undivided on the keys. It is amazing what a variety
we could cast upon the waltz, now giving it a muffled sound, and
presently offering the dancers a prolonged roaring.
Midway in the evening, when the atrocities of dinner were but mildly
remembered, ice-cream was brought in. It was not hard as at dinner,
but had settled to a delicious softness, and could be mushed upon a
spoon. Then while the party again proceeded, and my aunt resumed her
waltz, we were despatched upstairs.
On the bed lay our stockings, still tied with string, that had been
stuffed with presents in the dawn. But the morning had now sunk into
immeasurable distance and seemed as remote as Job himself. And all
through the evening, as we lay abed and listened to the droning piano
below, we felt a spiritual hollowness because the great day had
passed.
[Illustration]
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