The boy, to whom going to bed at the usual hour was a heavy cross on this
momentous evening, promptly availed himself of a chance for delay by
climbing on Amy's lap, and going into a voluble inventory of the contents
of a drawer into which he had obtained several surreptitious peeps. His
effort to tell an interminable story that he might sit up longer, the
droll havoc he made with his English, and the naming of the toys that
were destined for the supposed child, evoked an unforced merriment which
banished the last vestige of restraint.

"Well, I'm glad it has all happened so," said Amy, after the little
fellow had reluctantly come to the end of his facts and his invention
also. "You make me feel as if I had known you for years--almost,
indeed, as if I had come to you as a little girl, and had grown up among
you. Come, Ned, it shall all turn out just as you expected. I'll go with
you upstairs, and hang my stocking beside yours, and mamma shall put into
it all the lovely things you have told me about. Santa Claus does not
know much about my coming here, nor what kind of a girl I am, so your
kind mamma meant to act the part of Santa Claus in my behalf this year,
and give him a chance to get acquainted with me. But he knows all about
you, and there's no telling how soon he may come to fill your stocking.
You know he has to fill the stockings of all the little boys and girls in
the country, and that will take a long time. So I think we had better go
at once, for I don't believe he would like it if he came and found you up
and awake."

This put a new aspect upon going to bed early, and having seen his short,
chubby stocking dangling with a long, slender one of Amy's by the
chimney-side, Ned closed his eyes with ineffable content and faith. Amy
then returned to the sitting-room, whither she was soon followed by Maggie,