"Coral is for babies! That is worse yet! I just wish there hadn't been any Christmas at all," says she, a-flinging the beads in a lovely pink heap on the floor. "There now--I'll just go up-stairs and stay there!" "Wait a minute, my darling," says E. E.; "mother has got something else." Cecilia turned back a step, but scorned to let her sullen face brighten, though her eyes grew eager when Cousin E. E. took a little paper box from one of the baskets, and opened it. "See here!" Cecilia edged up to her mother, saw the emerald ring, and snatched at it. "I bought it for Cousin Phœmie," says E. E., a-looking sort of pleadingly at me; "but as you are so disappointed, I'm sure she won't care." "Cousin Phœmie! The idea!" Cecilia muttered to herself, as she tried the ring, first on one finger, then on another. "Of course she don't want it--old as the hills!" I did not say one word while that creature carried off the first Christmas present I ever had in my life; but it seemed as if I should choke. Isn't it hard that a spoiled child like that should have the power to destroy the happiness of three grown people? But she did it. The Christmas dinner was enough to make your mouths water, from this distance--the noblest sort of a turkey, stuffed with oysters, and everything to match--but none of us had much appetite for it. You can judge what my feelings amounted to, when I have lived one whole month in a boarding-house and couldn't get up an appetite--no, not even for the whitest meat of the breast! Old as the hills, indeed! XX. ABOUT LIONS. Dear sisters:--Cousin E. E. had invited a lot of her friends to a stupendous dinner-party on Christmas Day, and she wanted me there for a lion, she said, though what on earth a great roaring lion had to do at a dinner-table I couldn't begin to think. The idea made me fidgety; but I didn't think it consistent with the dignity of our Society to ask questions, or let any one know that I didn't understand everything just as well as folks that have lived in York all their lives. Still I couldn't help trying to circumvent Cousin E. E. into telling me what I wanted to know in a way that some people might call femininely surreptitious. "A lion!" says I. "Are such animals invited to a city dinner as a general thing?" "Oh! not at all," says she; "the most difficult thing in the world to get hold of is a real, genuine lion; that is, one the whole world knows about, and wants to see." "Why," says I, "if folks are so anxious about it, why don't they go up to the Rink and see Mr. Barnum's great monster animal. It don't cost much; besides, there are camels and monkeys, and lots and lots of things, thrown in." Cousin Emily Elizabeth laughed till tears come into her eyes. "Oh! Cousin Phœmie," says she, "you are so delightfully satirical." "Do you think so?" says I, awfully puzzled.