Produced by Daniel Fromont
[Transcriber's note: Susan Warner (1819-1885) & Anna Warner(1824-1915), Say and seal (1860), Tauchnitz edition 1860 volume 2]
1860.
So came the holiday week, wherein was to be done so much less thanusual—and so much more. Mr. Linden's work, indeed, was like to doubleon all hands; for he was threatened with more tea-drinkings, dinners,suppers, and frolics, than the week would hold. How should he manage togive everybody a piece of him, and likewise present himself entire tothe assembled boys when ever they chose to assemble?—which promised tobe pretty often. How should he go skating, sliding, and sleigh-riding,at all hours of the day and night, and yet spend all those hours wherehe wanted to spend them? It was a grave question; and not easy, as heremarked to Faith, to hold so many feelings in his hands and hurt noneof them. So with the question yet undecided, Christmas day came.
It was a brilliant day—all white and blue; the sky like a sapphire,the earth like a pearl; the sunbeams burnished gold.
"Ha' ye but seen the light fall of the snow,
Before the soil hath smutched it?"—
Such was Pattaquasset, Christmas morning. And the bright lily,
"Before rude hands have touched it,"
that was Faith Derrick when she came down stairs. The dainty littlecrimson silk hood which Mrs. Derrick had quilted for her, was in herhand, brought down for display; but at present the sitting-room wasempty, and Faith passed on to her work-basket, to put the hood in safekeeping. She found a pre-occupied basket. At some unknown hour of thenight, Santa Claus had come and left upon it his mark in the shape of apackage: a rather large and rather thin package, but done up with thatinfallible brown paper and small cord which everybody knows byinstinct. Who ever looked twice at a parcel from that wagon, anddoubted whence it came?
Faith's cheeks took an additional tinge, quite as brilliant as if thecrimson hood had been on. What doubtful fingers lifted the package fromthe basket!
The thing—whatever it was—had been done up carefully. Beneath thebrown paper a white one revealed itself, beneath that a red leatherportfolio—made in the pretty old-fashioned style, and securing itscontents by means of its red leather tongue. But when Faith hadwithdrawn this, and with the caution always exercised on such occasionshad also drawn out the contents, she found the prettiest continuationof her Italian journey, in the shape of very fine photographs of allsorts of Italian plac