"While the battle is going on, you might look around once more for the key, Elizabeth. Likely enough they have it hid somewhere in here. They got the Tree into the house last night without our catching them. And after they think we are asleep to-night, they'll hang the presents on, and to-morrow they'll pretend they didn't. But we can't let them go on treating us like infants, or as if we were no better than immigrants. That's what little immigrants believe! And that's how we got the notion in this country. Old William was an immigrant! But I wouldn't loathe him as I do if he hadn't been one of the hypocritical praying immigrants. He could have prayed without being a hypocrite, Elizabeth; and he could have been a hypocrite without praying; but he wanted to be both, the old beast!" "But he stopped praying centuries ago, Harold," said Elizabeth, rubbing her long nose against the window-pane as though she had a mind to shorten it on a grindstone. "Can't you find enough in the world to fight without going away back to fight William the Conqueror? What have we Kentucky children got to do with William the Conqueror on Christmas Eve! And suppose he was a hypocrite then; he can't be a hypocrite _now_! If he went where it's nicest to go, it must have been taken out of him by this time; and if he went where they say it is not so nice, O dear! of course, I don't know what became of it _there_; it may have exploded; it may have blown him up." Elizabeth had begun her earliest study of chemistry; she disliked explosive gases. A few minutes later the deliberate voice rose out of the sofa pillows:-- "I wish it had been me to turn the heat on him: I'd have made him sizzle! If you find the key, lay it aside quietly, Elizabeth. By that time the moon may be shining down on the battle-field where I am dead among my common soldiers, all of us covered with gore: let the king lie there with them as one of them: doesn't that sound fine?" "Not to me!" said Elizabeth. "It sounds like nonsense: what's the matter with _your_ mind's eye, I beg to inquire?"