"Well," said his father, "where will you hold this performance? I can't have you prowling all over the house, waking up honest people who are abed and asleep."
"You must take the nursery," said Mrs. Maynard. "I wouldn't let you stay downstairs alone, but you may stay in the nursery as late as you like. I daresay by ten or half-past, you'll be glad to give it up, and go to your beds."
"Not we," said King. "Thank you, heaps, for letting us do it. We're going to have a fine time. Come on, girls!"
"One minute, King; you're not to make any noise after ten-thirty. Grandma goes to her room then, and the rest of us soon after."
"All right, we won't. It isn't going to be a noisy party, anyhow."
"Then I don't see how it can be a Maynard party," said Uncle Steve, quizzically, but the children had run away.
"Now, we'll just have the time of our lives!" said King, as the three of them reached the nursery.
"Of course we will," agreed Marjorie. "What shall we do?"
"Let's see, it's nine o'clock. We can play anything till half-past ten; after that we can only do quiet things. Let's play Blind Man's Buff."
"All right, you be it."
So King was blindfolded, and he soon caught Kitty, who soon caught Midget, and then she caught King again. But it wasn't very much fun, and nobody quite knew why.
"It makes me too tired," said Kitty, throwing herself on the couch, and fanning her hot little face with her handkerchief. "Let's play a sit-down game."
"But we can play those after we have to be quiet," objected King. "Get up, Kit, you'll fall asleep if you lie there."
"No, 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