Excerpt
CHAPTER I. KEEPING SECRETS.
We might begin this story of Susy Parlin on a New Year's day, only it is so hard to skip over Christmas. There is such a charm about Christmas! It makes you think at once of a fir tree shining with little candles and sparkling with toys, or of a droll Santa Claus with a pack full of presents, or of a waxen angel called the Christ-child.
And it is just as well to date from the twenty-fifth of December, because, as "Christ was born on Christmas day," that is really the "Happy New Year."
For a long while the three little Parlin girls had been thinking and dreaming of presents. Susy's wise head was like a beehive, full of little plans and little fancies, which were flying about like bees, and buzzing in everybody's ears.
But it may be as well to give you a short description of the Parlin family.
Susy's eyes were of an "evening blue," the very color of the sky in a summer night; good eyes, for they were as clear as a well which has the "truth" lying at the bottom of it. She was almost as nimble as a squirrel, and could face a northern snow storm like an engineer. Her hair was dark brown, and as smooth and straight as pine-needles; while Prudy's fair hair rippled like a brook running over pebbles. Prudy's face was sunny, and her mouth not much larger than a button-hole.
The youngest sister was named Alice, but the family usually called her Dotty, or Dotty Dimple, for she was about as round as a period, and had a cunning little dimple in each cheek. She had bright eyes, long curls, and a very short tongue; that is, she did not talk much. She was two years and a half old before she could be prevailed upon to say anything at all. Her father declared that Dotty thought there were people enough in the world to do the talking, and she would keep still; or perhaps she was tired of hearing Prudy say so much.
However, she had a way of nodding her curly head, and shaking her plump little forefinger; so everybody knew very well what she meant. She had learned the use of signs from a little deaf and dumb boy of whom we shall hear more by and by; but all at once, when she was ready she began to talk with all her might, and soon made up for lost time.
The other members of the family were only grown people: Mr. and Mrs. Parlin, the children's excellent parents; Mrs. Read, their kind Quaker grandmother; and the Irish servant girl, Norah.
Just now Mrs. Margaret Parlin, their "aunt Madge," was visiting them, and the little girls felt quite easy about Christmas, for they gave it all up to her; and when they wanted to know how to spend their small stock of money, or how much this or that pretty toy would cost, Prudy always settled it by saying, "Let's go ask auntie: she'll know, for she's been through the Rithmetic."
Prudy spoke these words with awe. She thought "going through the Rithmetic" was next thing to going round the world.
"O Auntie, I'm so glad you came," said Susy, "for I didn't see how I was ever going to finish my Christmas presents: I go to school, you know, and it takes me all the rest of the time to slide!"
The children were busy making wonderful things "all secret;" or they would have been secret if Prudy hadn't told....