Part 21 (1/2)

”The Christmas Waits came and sang under my window. I could see them from my bed. The leader carried a torch so the others could see to read their books. He had on a red cloak. And they sang such beautiful carols!”

”Oh, why didn't they come out and sing to us?” said Alice.

”You are pretty far out of town. I think they only sang to sick people and old people. They went up to the hospital, and they asked father for a list of his patients who were not too sick to be disturbed by the singing.”

”Well, anyway, I'd rather have been well than to have heard the carols,”

said Peggy. ”You poor dear, I can't get over your being in bed on Christmas Day.”

But Diana's eyes were s.h.i.+ning. ”I shouldn't have had Tom's poem if I had been well,” she said, ”or the Christmas egg. Even if one is sick, Christmas is the happiest time in all the year.”

CHAPTER XV

THE GREAT STORM

That was a winter of great storms. They began in November, and the snow piled up higher and higher, so that when one went down to the shops, one walked between walls of snow. The oldest inhabitant remembered nothing like it.

”It seems like going up mountains,” Peggy said to Alice, one day when they came to a house where the sidewalk had not been shoveled out.

It was a wonderful winter for children, for such coasting and tobogganing had never been known. It was not such a good winter for creatures who wore fur and feathers. Lady Janet, who had never known any other winter and did not realize that the oldest inhabitant had not known one like it, would return from an encounter with the snowflakes in dazed wonder and take her seat on a chair in front of the kitchen stove, or she would patiently watch by a mouse-hole for hours together.

The inhabitants of Hotel Hennery took life placidly, although they were confined to the hotel. But, having nothing more interesting to do, they turned their attention to laying eggs; after January set in, they all began to lay, so that Mrs. Owen and the children each had a fresh egg for breakfast most of the time.

The snow-storms grew more and more frequent as the winter pa.s.sed, and the snow was deeper and deeper. It was all great fun for Alice and Peggy. They never tired of the coasting and the walk to and from school.

It was hard for Diana, however, for in stormy or very cold weather she had to stay in the house. She was so much better after the summer that, in the autumn, she began to go to school. Diana was in the same room with Peggy, in the cla.s.s below her. She had to be out of school almost half the time.

”I wouldn't mind being out of school,” said Alice. ”Think of having no lessons to get and staying in that lovely room with a wood fire on the hearth, and everybody coming to see you.”

”You wouldn't like it a bit if you didn't feel well,” said Peggy. ”Think of not being able to go coasting.”

The children went to see Diana almost every day, and there did not seem to be any room quite so pleasant as Diana's room, with the fire on the hearth and the blooming flowers.

Diana was often well enough to be downstairs in the parlor, and this was a pleasant room, too. It seemed strange to the children to think it was their own old parlor, for it was so differently arranged. There was a large piano at which Diana practiced when she was well enough. It took up the side of the room where their mother's writing-desk had been.

Their piano was an upright one, and it had been on the opposite side of the room. Small as it was, it almost filled up one side of their tiny parlor now. It had been used very little since it had gone to its new surroundings, for there was no longer any money for music-lessons, and Mrs. Owen had been too busy to touch it; besides, she had never played a great deal, except the accompaniments for her husband's singing. So the piano was resting. But Mrs. Owen had determined that, just as soon as she had got ahead a little, the children should have their music-lessons again.

Alice's birthday came in February, and when her mother asked her what she would like best, in the way of a celebration, she did not hesitate a minute.

”I should like to have Diana come the night before and spend the whole day.”

”Don't you want any one else?”

”No one else,” said Alice, ”except you and Peggy, of course. I never have played dolls all I wanted to, because Peggy doesn't like to play, and so, on my birthday, I'd like to have just a feast of dolls, from morning until night.”

”But there will be your school,” said her mother. ”I couldn't let you skip that.”

”Couldn't you? I thought perhaps you could.”

”No, I couldn't. I think it would be better if Diana came to dinner and for the afternoon.”