chilled our impatience to be gone; but so far as possible we lived
in a country atmosphere, and amused ourselves by trying to conform
to country ways in a city flat. Even Winnie declared she heard the
cocks crowing at dawn, while Bobsey had a different kind of grunt or
squeal for every pig in his book.




CHAPTER V

A COUNTRY CHRISTMAS IN A CITY FLAT


On Christmas morning we all brought out our purchases and arranged
them on a table. Merton was almost wild when he found a bright
single-barrelled gun with accoutrements standing in the corner. Even
Mousie exclaimed with delight at the bright-colored papers of
flower-seeds on her plate. To Winnie were given half a dozen china
eggs with which to lure the prospective biddies to lay in nests
easily reached, and she tried to cackle over them in absurd
imitation. Little Bobsey had to have some toys and candy, but they
all presented to his eyes the natural inmates of the barn-yard. In
the number of domestic animals he swallowed that day he equalled the
little boy in Hawthorne's story of "The House of the Seven Gables,"
who devoured a ginger-bread caravan of camels and elephants
purchased at Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon's shop.

Our Christmas dinner consisted almost wholly of such vegetables as
we proposed to raise in the coming summer. Never before were such