chocolate drops.

So through their mother's room they stole softly, only throwing over
one chair, and hitting Dotty's crib a little in their haste. Dotty made
a sleepy sound of alarm, and Prudy could not help laughing, but only "in
her sleeve," that is, in her "nightie" sleeve, which she put up to her
mouth to smother the noise.

When they had reached the back-stairs Susy whispered, "O, Norah is up
and gone down. I hear her in the kitchen. 'Sh! 'Sh!"

Susy thought there was no time to be lost, and she would have rushed
down stairs, two steps at a time, but her little sister was exactly in
the way.

"Somebody has been and tugged my little chair up here," said Prudy,
"and I must tug it back again."

So in the dim light the two children groped their way down stairs, Prudy
going first with the chair.

"O, what a little snail! Hurry--can't you?" said Susy, impatiently;
"Norah'll be gone! What's the use of our waking up in the night if we
can't say Merry Christmas to anybody?"

"Well, _ain't_ I a-hurryin' now?" exclaimed Prudy, plunging forward and
falling, chair and all, the whole length of the stairs.

All the house was awake now, for Prudy screamed lustily. Grandma Read
called out from the passage-way,--