But if any one thought I would tell anything I saw when he came they were badly mistaken.
All of us rushed around like we were crazy.

If father and mother hadn't held steady and kept us down, we might have raised the roof.

We were all so glad about getting Leon and the money back; mother hadn't been sick since the fish cured her; the new blue goose was so like the one that had burst, even father never noticed any difference; all the children were either home or coming, and after we had our gifts and the biggest dinner we ever had, Christmas night all of us would go to the schoolhouse to see our school try to spell down three others to whom they had sent saucy invitations to come and be beaten.
Mother sat in the dining-room beside the kitchen door, so that she could watch the baking, brewing, pickling, and spicing.

It took four men to handle the backlog, which I noticed father pronounced every year "just a little the finest we ever had," and Laddie strung the house with bittersweet, evergreens, and the most beautiful sprays of myrtle that he raked from under the snow.

Father drove to town in the sleigh, and the list of things to be purchased mother gave him as a reminder was almost a yard long.
The minute they finished the outdoor work Laddie and Leon began bringing in baskets of apples, golden bellflowers, green pippins, white winter pearmains, Rhode Island greenings, and striped rambos all covered with hoarfrost, yet not frozen, and so full of juice you had to bite into them carefully or they dripped and offended mother.