"
"Mother's room" was, in truth, the favorite haunt of the house, and only
her need of quiet kept it from being full much of the time. There was
nothing bleak or repelling in the age it sheltered, and children and
grandchildren gathered about the old people almost as instinctively as
around their genial open fire. This momentous Christmas-eve found them
all there, a committee of reception awaiting the new inmate of their
home. There was an eager desire to know what Amy was like, but it was a
curiosity wholly devoid of the spirit of criticism. The circumstances
under which the orphan came to them would banish any such tendency in
people less kindly than the Cliffords; but their home-life meant so much
to them all that they were naturally solicitous concerning one who must,
from the intimate relations she would sustain, take from or add much to
it. Therefore it was with a flutter of no ordinary expectancy that they
waited for her appearance. The only one indifferent was Leonard's youngest
boy, who, astride his grandpa's cane, was trotting quietly about,
unrestricted in his gambols. Alfred had thawed out since his return from
the station, and was eager to take the measure of a possible playmate; but,
with the shyness of a boy who is to meet a "strange girl," he sought a
partial cover behind his grandfather's chair. Little "Johnnie" was flitting
about impatiently, with her least mutilated doll upon her arm; while her
uncle Burtis, seated on a low stool by his mother's sofa, pretended to be
exceedingly jealous, and was deprecating the fact that he would now be no
longer petted as her baby, since the child of her adoption must assuredly
take his place.
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