SCENE III.


The little ones went gayly into the yard. They had been scared by their
mother's tears; but she had smiled again, and that had made all right
with them. The sun was shining brightly, and they were on the sunny side
of the old church, and they laughed and chirped and chittered to each
other as merrily as the little birds in the ivy boughs.

The old sexton came to the side door and threw out an armful of refuse
greens, and then stopped a moment and nodded kindly at them.

"May we play with them, please, sir?" said the little Elsie, looking up
with great reverence.

"Oh, yes, to be sure; these are done with--they are no good now."

"Oh, Tottie!" cried Elsie, rapturously, "just think, he says we may play
with all these. Why, here's ever and ever so much green, enough to play
house. Let's play build a house for father and mother."

"I'm going to build a big house for 'em when I grow up," said Tottie,
"and I mean to have glass bead windows in it."

Tottie had once had presented to him a box of colored glass beads to
string, and he could think of nothing finer in the future than unlimited
glass beads.

Meanwhile, his sister began planting pine branches upright in the snow,
to make her house.