"Yes, sir, Santa Claus or somebody did, and gave us lovely things.

We're very much obliged to him." As they spoke the door into their little sitting-room opened and Max put in his head, crying in his turn, "Merry Christmas to you all--papa and Mamma Vi, Lulu and Gracie." A chorus of merry Christmases answered him; then Lulu asked, "What did Santa Claus put in your stocking, Maxie ?" "A good deal: about as much as could be crammed into it; some handsome neckties, candies and nuts and a gold pencil." "Very nice," commented Lulu, and she and Grace, both talking at once, gave a gleeful account of their discoveries in searching their stockings.
They had hardly finished their narrative when a glad shout from the nursery interrupted them.
"There! little Elsie has found her stocking, I do believe," said Lulu, starting up to a sitting posture that she might look through the open door into the next room.

As she did so a tiny toddling figure clothed in a white night dress, and with a well filled stocking in its arms emerged from the nursery door and ran across the room to the bedside, crying gleefully, "See mamma, papa, Elsie got." "What have you got pet ?" asked her father, picking her up and setting her in the bed.

"There, pull out the things and let papa and mamma see what they are." "Mayn't we come and see too ?" asked the other children.
"Yes," he said, "you can come and peep in at the door, but first put on your warm slippers and dressing gowns, that you may not take cold." Baby Elsie was a merry, demonstrative little thing, and it was great fun for them all to watch her and hear her shouts of delight as she came upon one treasure after another;--tiny, gaily dressed dolls of both sexes, and other toys suited to her years.
It did not take her very long to empty the stocking, and then the captain said to the older ones, "Now you may close the door, my dears, and get yourselves dressed and ready for the duties and pleasures of the day.

I shall be in presently for our usual chat before breakfast." They made haste with their dressing, and were quite ready for their father when he came in some half hour later.