“Of course, there’s only one really good Christmas cookie. You don’t have ’em. They’re Italian. Called pizza or something.”

“Do you mean pizelle?” asked Lucy.

“Yeah. They’re made on a little waffle iron thing. Had ’em once and never forgot ’em.”

Lucy couldn’t help smiling as she went off to the kitchen, because high up on a shelf in the pantry, in her tin of cookies from the cookie exchange, were six lovely pizelle made by Lydia Volpe. Lucy hummed as she put the water on to boil and set out cups. She added three glasses of milk for the children, and then she climbed up the stepladder and carefully brought down the cookies. She arranged them attractively on her special Christmas plate, clustering the delicate pizelle together. When the kettle shrieked she poured the tea and proudly carried the tray out of the kitchen. She couldn’t wait to see the expression on Grandpa Stone’s face.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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Christmas Eve really is the longest day of the year, thought Lucy as she glanced at the kitchen clock on her way to bed. It was two in the morning and Bill was still snapping together the dozens of interlocking pieces of the Barbie town house. Everything else was ready. The presents were arranged under the tree, the stockings were filled, and Santa had nibbled his cookies and poured his warm milk down the kitchen drain. The house was quiet; everyone was asleep, presumably dreaming of sugarplums. Lucy went down to the cellar to get the kittens.

She found them all asleep in a pile in a corner of the cardboard box she’d made their temporary home. She picked up the carton and tiptoed upstairs with it. Setting it down next to her bed, she climbed between the sheets and put all three kittens in her lap.

“Time for some exercise,” she told them, and smiled as they climbed clumsily over each other and explored the mysterious hills and valleys her legs made in the covers. She picked each one up and examined it carefully, relieved to find they all appeared healthy, with no sign of fleas.

“Well, what have we got here?” asked Bill, coming into the room and beginning to strip off his clothes.

“Christmas kittens,” said Lucy, admiring the long, lean curve of his back as he bent over and pulled on his pajama pants. “How are we going to manage this? We can’t really put them in the kids’ stockings.”

“Never you worry,” Bill boasted. “No job is too difficult for Super-Santa!”

“You are a super Santa. Did Barbie’s house go together okay?”