Patricia, walking the room with the screaming Totty, came to a sudden halt before Archibald, lying face down on the floor.  “If you’ll stop crying I’ll let Custard come up,” she said.

“Who’s Custard?” Archibald rolled over on his back to consider the matter.

“My dog.”

“Where is he?”

“Downstairs—­in the kitchen.”

“Does he like boys?”

“Not when they cry.”

Archibald rubbed his eyes.  “I’m not crying now.”

But at that moment, Custard, who considered that he had been kept in the background quite long enough, came upstairs on his own account.  As Sarah said, he seemed “ter sense the situation,” for he trotted about making friends, lapping the tears from Tommy’s face, and standing up on his hind legs to let Totty pat his head.

Sarah promptly took advantage of the lull to whisk the boys off to the bath-room; half an hour later, all five children, well wrapped in shawls and blankets, were gathered about the fire in Patricia’s room for the hanging of the Christmas stockings.

That ceremony over, Sarah pounced on Tommy and Archibald, carrying them off to bed in Miss Kirby’s room.  “An’ mercy knows what Miss Julia done say when she find yo’ here,” she muttered, tucking them in snugly.

Archibald sat up in bed.  “I want—­Custard!”

“Yo’ go ‘long ter sleep, young sir,” Sarah expostulated.  “What yo’ think Marse Santa Clause goin’ say ter such goin’s-on?”

“I want Custard!”

“Let him have him, Sarah!” Patricia exclaimed.

“Miss P’tricia!  ‘Low that onery dog on yo’ aunt’s bed!”

Patricia let the insult to her pet pass.

“On it, in it, under it, if it’ll keep him quiet!”

Sarah lifted Custard in far from respectful fashion, dropping him, an astonished, but entirely acquiescent heap, between Archibald and Tommy.

Lydia, already asleep, was disposed of in Patricia’s bed, and Norma and Totty settled comfortably on the wide lounge.

“An’ now, honey,” Sarah said, “I’s goin’ get you and Miss Nell yo’ supper.”

They went downstairs, where Sarah made Patricia and Nell comfortable at a small table drawn up before the sitting-room fire.

“But what are you going to fill those stockings with, Pat?” Nell asked, after Sarah had left them alone.

“I can manage all right for the girls; I’ve loads of toys stowed away up garret.  I’ve always had heaps of things given me, but if I could get out-of-doors, and had something alive to play with, I’d let the other things go every time.  I am a bit puzzled about Archibald’s and Tommy’s.”

“I’ll run home and get some of the little boys’ toys,” Nell offered.  When supper was over, while Patricia went, as she called it, “shopping up garret,” Nell made a hurried trip home and back.

“There,” she exclaimed, coming in breathless, her head and shoulders white with snow, “will these do?” She laid a toy engine, a trumpet, a tin sword, and a small box of lead soldiers on the table.