Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: "'I HAVEN'T GIVEN YOU ANY CHRISTMAS PRESENT. WILL--I--DO?'"] On Christmas Day in the Morning _By_ GRACE S. RICHMOND Illustrated by CHARLES M. RELYEA GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY MCMXI COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY THE RIDGWAY-THAYER COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY * * * * * Illustrations "'I haven't given you any Christmas present. Will--I--do?'" _Frontispiece_ "Stumbling over their own feet and bundles ... the crew poured into the warm kitchen" "'The children!' she was saying. 'They--they--John--they must be _here_'" "'Merry Christmas, mammy and daddy!'" * * * * * On Christmas Day in the Morning And all the angels in heaven do sing, On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day; And all the bells on earth do ring, On Christmas Day in the morning. --OLD SONG. That Christmas Day virtually began a whole year beforehand, with a red-hot letter written by Guy Fernald to his younger sister, Nan, who had been married to Samuel Burnett just two and one-half years. The letter was read aloud by Mrs. Burnett to her husband at the breakfast table, the second day after Christmas. From start to finish it was upon one subject, and it read as follows: DEAR NAN: It's a confounded, full-grown shame that not a soul of us all got home for Christmas--except yours truly, and he only for a couple of hours. What have the blessed old folks done to us that we treat them like this? I was invited to the Sewalls' for the day, and went, of course--you know why. We had a ripping time, but along toward evening I began to feel worried. I really thought Ralph was home--he wrote me that he might swing round that way by the holidays--but I knew the rest of you were all wrapped up in your own Christmas trees and weren't going to get there.