Abbie had an oyster supper. That, too, was a hang-over from the days when sea food was scarce and expensive. No matter that the bi-valves were on every menu placed before the various members of the Deal family these days, Abbie continued to have an oyster supper each Christmas eve,—bowls of crackers alternating down the long table with celery, standing upright in vase-looking dishes, like so many bouquets from the greenhouse.

Jimmie Buchanan came over later in the evening and brought Katherine a gift. Jimmie was rather astounded at the sight of so many relatives.

“Every one has to be here,” Katherine told him. “In all the wedding ceremonies, whenever a Deal is married, the question is asked, ‘Do you solemnly promise to spend all your Christmases at Granny Deal’s, forsaking all others as long as you shall live?’ And if you can’t promise,—out you go before you’re in.”

Abbie Deal was embarrassed beyond words. To speak so to a young man with whom you were keeping company!

Katherine went on, “No, sir,—it wouldn’t be Christmas without the wax flowers in the parlor and the patent rocking-chair and the painting of the purple cow and the whut-nut. Grandma makes us all animal cookies yet. Can you beat it? When I was big enough to read love stories by the dozens, she gave me ‘The Frog That Would A-Wooing Go,’—not but that it had its romantic appeal, too. We always stay two nights and we have to have beds everywhere. Granny puts us in corners, on couches, sinks, bath-tubs, ironing-boards . . . and not one of us would miss it. Donald passed up a dance at the Fontanelle for it. You can’t tell the reason, but the minute you see those old cedar trees and come up the lane under the Bombarded poplars with snow on ’em, you’re just little and crazy over Christmas.”

There were some very lovely presents the next morning,—the radio in its dull-finished cabinet for Abbie, jewelry, a fur, expensive toys and books,—an old musty smelling one for Emma, who had gone in for first and rare editions. Margaret gave her mother the painting of the prairie with the sunshine lying in little yellow-pink pools between the low rolling hills. “For I think you made me love it, Mother, when I was a little girl. I learned to see it through your eyes,” she told her.

In the afternoon, Mackenzie Deal, the Omaha banker, in an overcoat and old muffler that had been his father’s, spent a large share of his time out in the barn cracking walnuts on a cottonwood chunk. John Deal, the state legislator, went up into the hay-loft and potted a few pigeons with an old half-rusty rifle. Isabelle Deal Rhodes, the well-known Chicago singer, called her husband to help her get the old reed-organ out of the storehouse. She dusted it, and then, amid a great deal of hilarity, pumped out, “By the Blue Alsatian Mountains.” One of the keys gave forth no sound at all, so that whenever she came to it the young folks all shouted the missing note.