“Ah, well, you little folks look forward, and we old folks look backward; but it all seems like a dream, either way, to me,” said grandma Read, binding off the thumb of her little red mitten—­“like a dream when it is told.”

“Speaking of telling dreams, grandma, I had a funny one last night,” said Prudy, “about a queer old gentleman.  Guess who it was.”

“Thy grandfather, perhaps.  Does thee remember, Alice, how thee used to sit on his knee and comb his hair with a toothpick?”

“I don’t think ’twas me,” said Dotty; “for I wasn’t born then.”

“It was I,” replied Prudy.  “I remember grandpa now, but I didn’t use to.  It wasn’t grandpa I dreamed about—­it was Santa Claus.”

Grandma smiled, and raised her spectacles to the top of her forehead.

“We never talked about fairies in my day,” said she.  “I never heard of a Santa Claus when I was young.”

“Well, grandma, he came down the chimney in a coach that looked like a Quaker bonnet on wheels—­but he was all a-dazzle with gold buttons; and what do you think he said?”

“Something very foolish, I presume.”

“He said, ‘Miss Prudy, I’m going to be married.’  Only think! and he such a very old bachelor.”

“Did thee dream out the bride?”

“It was Mother Goose.”

“Very well,” said Mrs. Read, smiling.  “I should think that was a very good match.”

“She did look so funny, grandma, with a great hump on her nose, and one on her back!  Santa Claus kissed her; and what do you think she said?”

“I am sure I can’t tell; I am not acquainted with thy fairy folks.”

“Why, she shook her sides, and, said she, ‘Sing a song o’ sixpence.’”

“That was as sensible a speech as thee could expect from that quarter.”

“O, grandma, you don’t care anything about my dream, or I could go on and describe the wedding-cake; how she put sage in it, and pepper, and mustard, and baked it on top of one of our registers.  What do you suppose made me dream such a queer thing?”

“Thee was probably thinking of thy mother’s wedding.”

“O, Christmas is going to be splendided than ever, this year,” said Dotty; “isn’t it grandma?  Did you have any Christmases when you were young?”

“O, yes; but we didn’t make much account of Christmas in those days.”

“Why, grandma!  I knew you lived on bean porridge, but I s’posed you had something to eat Christmas!”

“O, sometimes I had a little saucer-pie, sweetened with molasses, and the crust made of raised dough.”

“Poor, dear grandma!”

“I remember my father used to put a great backlog on the fire Christmas morning, as large as the fireplace would hold; and that was all the celebration we ever had.”

“Didn’t you have Christmas presents?”

“No, Alice; not so much as a brass thimble.”

“Poor grandma!  I shouldn’t think you would have wanted to live!  Didn’t anybody love you?” said Dotty, putting her fingers under Mrs. Read’s cap, and smoothing her soft gray hair; “why, I love every hair of your head.”