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СКАЧАТЬ I won't," said Kitty, opening her eyes very wide, but cuddling to the soft pillow.

      "Yes, you will, too! Come on. Let's play 'animals.' That's noisy enough, and you can sit down too."

      "Animals" was a card game where they sat round a table, and as occasion required assumed the voices of certain animals.

      "All right," said Kitty, jumping up; "I'll be the Laughing Hyena."

      "I'll be a Lion," said King, and Marjorie decided to be a Rooster.

      Soon the game was in full swing, and as the roar of the lion, the crowing of the rooster, and the strange noise that represented Kitty's idea of the hyena's mirth, floated downstairs, the grown-ups smiled once more at the irrepressible spirits of the young Maynards. But after they had roared and crowed and laughed for what seemed like an interminable time, King looked at his Christmas watch and exclaimed:

      "Goodness, girls! it's only half-past nine! I though it was about eleven!"

      "So did I," said Marjorie, trying to hide a yawn.

      "Oh, I say, Mops, you're sleepy!"

      "I am not, either! I just sort of—sort of choked."

      "Well, don't do it again. What shall we play now?"

      "Let's sing," said Kitty.

      So Marjorie banged away on the nursery piano, and they sang everything they could think of.

      "I can't play another note," said Midget, at last. "My fingers are perfectly numb. Isn't it nearly twelve?"

      "Isn't ten," said King, closing his watch with a snap. "We've only a half-hour more before we've got to be quiet, so let's make the most of it."

      "I'm hungry," said Kitty. "Can't we get something to eat?"

      "Good idea!" said King. "Let's forage for some things, and bring them up here, but don't eat them until later. After half-past ten, you know."

      So they all slipped down to the pantry, and returned with a collection of apples and cookies, which they carefully set aside for a later luncheon.

      "Only twenty minutes left of our noisy time," said King, with a suspicious briskness in his tone. "Come on, girls, let's have a racket."

      "There's no racket to me!" declared Kitty, throwing herself on the couch;

      "I feel—quiet."

      "Quiet!" exclaimed her brother. "Kit Maynard, if you're sleepy, you can go to bed! You're too young to sit up with Midge and me, anyhow!"

      This touched Kitty in a sensitive spot, as he knew it would.

      "I'm not!" she cried, indignantly; "I'm as old as you are, so there!"

      King didn't contradict this, which would seem to prove them both a bit sleepy.

      "You are, Kitty!" said Marjorie, laughing; "you're older than either of us! So you tell us what to do to keep awake!"

      It was out! Marjorie had admitted that they were sleepy.

      King grinned a little sheepishly. "Pooh," he said, "it'll pass over if we just get interested in something. Let's read aloud to each other."

      "That always puts me to sleep," said Kitty, with a fearful and undisguised yawn.

      "Kit! if you do that again, we'll put you out! Now, brace up,—or else go to bed!"

      Kitty braced up. Indeed, Kitty had special powers in this direction, if she chose to exercise them.

      "Pooh, I can brace up better than either of you," she said, confidently; "and here's how I'm going to do it."

      She went over to the big nursery washstand, and turning the cold water faucet, ran the bowl full, and then plunged her face and hands in.

      "Kit, you're a genius!" cried her brother, in admiration, as she came up, spluttering, and then made another dash. Soon Kitty's face was hidden in the folds of a rough towel, and the others successively followed her lead.

      "My! how it freshens you!" said Marjorie, rubbing her rosy cheeks till they glowed. "I'm as wide awake as anything!"

      "So'm I," said King. "Kit, I take off my hat to you! Now it's half-past ten. I move we eat our foods, and then we can have a good time playing parcheesi or jack-straws."

      They drew up to the nursery table, and endeavored to enjoy the cookies and apples.

      "How funny things taste at night," said Kitty. "I'm not hungry, after all."

      "You'd better wash your face again," said Marjorie, looking at her sister's drooping eyelids.

      "Do something to her," said King, in despair.

      So Marjorie tickled Kitty, until she made her laugh, and that roused her a little.

      "I won't go to sleep," she said, earnestly; "truly, I won't. I want to see the New Year come. Let's look out the window for it."

      Kitty's plans were always good ones.

      Drawing the curtains aside the three stood at the window, their arms about each other.

      "Isn't it still?" whispered Marjorie, "and look at the moon!"

      A yellow, dilapidated-looking, three-quarter sort of a moon was sinking in the west, and the bark branches of the trees stood out blackly in the half-light.

      The roads gleamed white, and the shrubbery looked dark, the whole landscape was weird and unlike the sunny scenes they knew so well.

      "I s'pose everybody in the house is abed now, but us," said King. He meant it exultantly, but his voice had a tone of awe, that found an echo in the girls' hearts.

      "Come away from the window," said Midge; turning back to the brightly lighted room. "Let's think of something nice to do."

      "I can think better here," said Kitty, dropping heavily on the couch, her head, by good luck; striking squarely in the middle of the pillow.

      "Kit," said her brother,—"Kitty,—you,—you go to bed,—if you—if you can't—"

      As King spoke, he came across a big armchair, and quite unintentionally he let himself fall into it. It felt very pleasant, somehow,—so much so, indeed, that he neglected to finish his admonition to Kitty, and she wouldn't have heard it if he had!

      Marjorie, by a strange coincidence, also met a most friendly Morris chair, which held out inviting arms. It seemed a pity to refuse such cordiality, so Marjorie sat down in it a minute to do that thinking they had spoken about. What was it they were to think of? Something about the moon? No, that wasn't it. Her new furs? Not quite; school,—Gladys,—cookies?

      These thoughts drifted confusedly about Marjorie's brain for a few moments, and then, with a little tired sigh, her curly head dropped back on the Morris chair's velvet cushion, and her eyes closed.

      How those three children did sleep! The sound, hard sleep that only healthy, romping children know. When Mrs. Maynard softly opened the door a little later, she almost laughed aloud at the picturesque trio.

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