They could not believe it. Even when they had been to every room;--had seen their big son Ralph, still sleeping, his yet youthful face, full of healthy colour, pillowed on his brawny arm, and his mother had gently kissed him awake to be half-strangled in his hug;--when they had met Edson's hearty laugh as he fired a pillow at them--carefully, so that his father could catch it;--when they had seen plump pretty Carol pulling on her stockings as she sat on the floor smiling up at them;--Oliver, advancing to meet them in his bath-robe and slippers;--Guy, holding out both arms from above his blankets, and shouting "Merry Christmas!--and how do you like your children?"--even then it was difficult to realise that not one was missing--and that no one else was there. Unconsciously Mrs. Fernald found herself looking about for the sons' wives and daughters' husbands and children. She loved them all;--yet--to have her own, and no others, just for this one day--it was happiness indeed. When they were all downstairs, about the fire, there was great rejoicing. They had Marietta in; indeed, she had been hovering continuously in the background, to the apparently frightful jeopardy of the breakfast in preparation, upon which, nevertheless, she had managed to keep a practised eye. "And you were in it, Marietta?" Mr. Fernald said to her in astonishment, when he first saw her. "How in the world did you get all these people into the house and to bed without waking us?" "It was pretty consid'able of a resk," Marietta replied, with modest pride, "'seein' as how they was inclined to be middlin' lively. But I kep' a-hushin' 'em up, and I filled 'em up so full of victuals they couldn't talk. I didn't know's there'd be any eatables left for to-day," she added--which last remark, since she had been slyly baking for a week, Guy thought might be considered pure bluff. At the breakfast table, while the eight heads were bent, this thanksgiving arose, as the master of the house, in a voice not quite steady, offered it to One Unseen: _Thou who camest to us on that first Christmas Day, we bless Thee for this good and perfect gift Thou sendest us to-day, that Thou forgettest us not in these later years, but givest us the greatest joy of our lives in these our loyal children._ Nan's hand clutched Guy's under the table. "Doesn't that make it worth it?" his grasp said to her, and hers replied with a frantic pressure, "Indeed it does, but we don't deserve it."