People were beginning to think and talk about Christmas. There was a pleasant stir in the air of something mysterious and delightful about to happen. Mamma and Aunt Vi were often together in Aunt Vi’s “snuggery” up-stairs, and what they were consulting about nobody ventured to ask; some uncommonly fine present for each of the children, no doubt.

One day Aunt Vi, who was sewing in the back parlor, looked up from her work, and said,—

“Jimmy-boy, do you think you could go to the store and buy me some blue sewing-silk like this pattern?”

And she held up a bit of blue satin.

“Why don’t you ask me, Auntie?” exclaimed Edith, dropping the doll she was dressing in a new tea-gown. “Boys don’t know the difference between a skein of silk and a clothes-line.”

Aunt Vi secretly thought that she could trust Jimmy better than Edith, but she did not like to say so.

“Then you may get me the silk, if you will, Edith; two spools.”

“Well, I’ll go with you,” said Jimmy-boy.

“If you’re going, I’ll have to go too,” piped wee Lucy.

“Of course,” thought Edith. “And there’s the dog, he’ll have to follow,—the ‘inevitable dog,’ Aunt Vi calls him. Oh, dear!”

“If the whole family is to go, we may as well have more errands done!” exclaimed mamma with a playful smile. “Can I trust you, Edith, to call at our grocer’s, Mr. Ladd’s, and ask him to send me two pounds of Santa Isabel butter?”

“‘Can I trust you?’” repeated Edith to herself. “Why do people always say that to me, as if they didn’t feel sure?”

“Yes, mamma,” she added aloud; “two pounds blue silk, two spools San Isabel’s butter;” then corrected her own mistake, laughing.

The little party went skipping along in a very gay mood, the “inevitable dog” at their heels. Instead of proceeding at once to the stores, Edith chose to go two or three blocks out of the way, to watch a couple of tiny boys riding together on the back of a burro, and to see how fast the workmen were getting on in building a tall house she greatly admired.

They passed Mrs. Phillips’s brown cottage, with the bird-of-paradise flowers in the garden. Edith had a fancy for these gay, graceful flowers, with their very long scarlet streamers floating on the air like little banners. But just now she should not have gone that way; it was one of her mistakes. Her mother had said to her only the day before,—

“Edith, when you are out with Lucy, I would prefer you shouldn’t go near Mrs. Phillips’s house, for I don’t like to expose Lucy to whooping-cough.”

Edith would not have “exposed” her little sister on any account if she had only stopped to think. She believed whooping-cough to be almost sure death. Hadn’t she had it herself just before Jimmy was born, and nearly died of it? So she firmly believed. At any rate, the nurse, Mrs. Chick, had not allowed her to go near the new baby,—only think of that! She had had to look at Jimmy through the window! She was only two years old at the time, and could not remember anything about it, but this was what everybody said. It had always impressed Edith as something very strange and dreadful, that she had been shut away like that from her own baby Jimmy! And, after all, he had had whooping-cough just the same.

“Why, there’s Sadie Phillips at the window!” said Jimmy. “What makes her face so red?”

Then all in a moment Edith stopped short in the street, and recalled her mother’s warning. She had done the wickedest, dreadfullest thing in the world to take Lucy near that cottage! And alas, alas! Sadie Phillips was coughing; that was what made her face look so red. The window was closed, it is true; but Edith heard the frightful sound, and it fell on her heart like a knell.

“What made me come here? What shall I do?” she wailed, seizing her little sister in her arms, and running furiously down the street.

Wee Lucy screamed, the dog barked, and Jimmy cried out, “What is it? What is it?” not knowing what to make of this strange behavior.

“Oh, I’ve esposed Lucy! I’ve esposed Lucy!” cried wretched Edith, the tears raining down her cheeks.

Lucy struggled out of her arms, laughing. She did not know what “esposed” meant; neither did Jimmy; and it may be that Edith did not clearly know herself.

“O Lucy darling, don’t laugh; it’s dreadful; it’s awful! What does make you act so, Jimmy? We must run, run, run! Lucy’s going to have whooping-cough, sure as you live.”

Upon that the small sister very naturally felt a tickling in the windpipe, and rasped her throat, trying to see if a cough would come. Nothing could so have increased Edith’s fright.

The better Lucy succeeded in coughing, the harder Edith cried, and the louder barked the wondering dog.

This delighted roguish Lucy. She liked to have Edith cry over her; it made her feel very important. She wished Jimmy would cry too; but he only said coolly,—

“Hush, Lucy; you haven’t got it; you needn’t pertend.”

“I know she hasn’t got it yet,” replied Edith; “it takes a long while. But what I’m crying about is, she’s going to get it! She’s swallowed some; she swallowed it when we stood by Sadie’s house.”

It was of no use for Jimmy to say “Pooh!” This was a matter of life and death to Edith. She wanted to take Lucy home at once, and perhaps have her shut in a dark room, or at any rate put to bed.

But those errands!

“Jimmy,” said she, as they came in sight of the stores, “my eyes don’t look very red, do they?”

Truthful James had to reply,—

“Yes, they do,—red as a lobster cactus.”

“Well, I can’t help it. You stay out here with Punch and Lucy, while I go in for the silk.”

“See here! I’ve thought of something,” said Jimmy, touched by Edith’s distress. “If Lucy did swallow some, can’t they give her something to cure it? Mamma could, I guess, or Dr. Devoll.”

“Why, I never thought of that,” returned Edith, gathering courage.

“Now, Lucy, you will be willing to take a pill when we get home if mamma thinks it’s best?”

Lucy wasn’t quite sure. She thought it would depend somewhat upon the size of the pill, also upon the sort of jelly it was offered in.

“Oh, how she does act sometimes!” sighed Edith. “Now, Lucy, you stay out here with the dog and Jimmy; you stay out here till I come back.”

Lucy consented.

It was a red-eyed, broken-hearted little girl who entered Mr. Hall’s store and asked for blue sewing-silk. You would hardly have known her for happy Edith Dunlee.

“Oh, no, sir,” she said when a spool was offered her. “Not silk; thread. She wants to sew it!” The salesman looked surprised, then amused, then sorry; for by this time Edith had begun to cry again.

“Wouldn’t it be well, little miss, for you to go home now, and come back again when you know your errand.”

Edith had to confess that it would.

She went next to the grocer’s for butter.

“I will send it up,” said the clerk.

But no, Edith was sure mamma had intended that she should carry it.

It was given her in a paper bag, and she held the bag close to her heart, and cried over it; and by the time they reached home the butter was ready to melt. She dropped it in a chair, and shrieked out,—

“O mamma, Lucy’s been there! I took her! I s’posed her!”

And down Edith sank upon the sofa in unspeakable woe. Little Lucy finished the direful story.

“Hookin’-cock, mamma, hookin’-cock! Give me a pill! Please put it in squinch jelly!”

I must confess that mamma and Aunt Vi fell to laughing in the most unfeeling manner. Each tried in turn to soothe poor Edith; and mamma said that even if Mrs. Phillips’s window had been wide open,—and Jimmy was sure it was shut,—that even with the window open it was hardly probable that Lucy had been exposed in so short a time.

“And whooping-cough is nothing very serious here in California, my daughter. Children suffer very little from it in this mild climate. I wouldn’t mind Lucy’s having it some time, say next spring; but just now,”—

Here she looked at Aunt Vi, who blushed and smiled.

“It would be rather awkward just now,” said Aunt Vi.

“Yes,” returned Mrs. Dunlee; “we mustn’t have any whooping-cough in the house till after the wedding.”

“Wedding?” repeated Edith, “what wedding?”

“Am I not a stupid woman!” exclaimed mamma, putting her hand over her mouth. “I came very near letting out a great secret.”

“But is there going to be a wedding, mamma?”

Edith’s tears were dried now. She had thrown to the winds all her whooping-cough fright.

“Is there going to be a wedding, mamma?”

“Yes, dear, sometime and somewhere we hope there will be a wedding. It isn’t quite time yet to talk much about it. Very soon you will know.”

Edith looked from her mother to her aunt, her eyes full of questions. But before she had time to put the questions into words, Aunt Vi inquired about her blue sewing-silk. Too bad to have to stop and explain all that; for afterwards Edith couldn’t find out the least thing about the wedding,—whose it was, or where or when. Papa pretended that it was very likely some Indians from Arizona.

“O papa! now you know it’s not Indians! And it’s nobody in Arizona either. The wedding belongs right here in California.”

“Indeed! And possibly in this very house. Who knows?”

Edith felt that she was being trifled with. Who was there in this house to be married but papa and mamma?

And they had been married already.

Then one day somebody said Mr. Henry Sanford was coming home from Washington.

“Oh, now I know!” cried Edith. “It’s Mr. Sanford and Aunt Vi; it’s Mr. Sanford and Aunt Vi!”

She was right. They were to be married at Christmas, just two weeks ahead.

“If Lucy doesn’t have whooping-cough, you mean?” said Edith. “If she does, I s’pose you’ll have to put off the wedding?”

No one answered this question. No one knew how it weighed upon Edith and Jimmy, or how closely they watched their little sister, fearing she might suddenly fall to coughing, and put a stop to the whole delightful and extraordinary plans for Christmas.

But Lucy did not cough,—except when somebody reminded her.