“You dear little thing,” said Aunt Charlotte, coming into the room with Ken in her arms, but putting him down and taking up her naughty niece. “You’ve been getting homesick all by yourself this long afternoon. Where did you stay?”

“Stayed up-sta—irs,” sobbed Flaxie.

“In the cold? Why, darling, what made you?”

“You all went off and left me,” replied Flaxie, with a little tempest of tears.

Then auntie understood it all,—how this child, who was old enough to know better, had been rolling a little bit of a trouble over and over, till it had grown into a mountain and almost crushed her. And the mother-heart in Aunt Charlotte’s bosom ached for poor foolish Flaxie.

“She has added to her cold, and is feverish,” thought the good lady, sending for Nancy to bring some hot water in the tin bath-tub that was used for washing the children.

“I shall have you sleep with me to-night, in the down-stairs room,” said Aunt Charlotte; “and I’ll put a flannel round your neck, dear, and some poultices on your feet.”

Flaxie smiled faintly as she saw the dried burdock-leaves soaking in vinegar, for she liked to have a suitable parade made over her when she was sick. Besides, she had often thought she should enjoy sleeping in the “down-stairs room,” and was glad now that Uncle Ben happened to be gone; that is, as glad as she could be of anything. It was a miserable, forlorn world all of a sudden to Flaxie, and she had never known such “a mean old night,” even if it was “the night before Christmas.”

The lamp burning dimly in the corner of the room, on the floor, cast shadows that frightened her; her head ached; she woke the baby in the crib by crying, and then he woke everybody else.

It was a “mean old night” to the whole house; and when I say the whole house, I mean both halves of it. About midnight, as Mrs. Hunter was sleeping sweetly, her door-bell rang a furious peal. Nobody likes to hear such a sound at dead of night, and Mrs. Hunter trembled a little, for she was all alone with her children; but she rose and dressed as fast as possible, and went down-stairs with a lamp.

“Who is it?” she asked, through the keyhole.

“It’s ME!” said a childish voice that she thought sounded like one of the Allen children.

She ventured to open the door, and there on the steps in the darkness stood Flaxie Frizzle, bareheaded, shivering, and looking terribly frightened.

“Oh, Mrs. Hunter, something orful has happened at our house. Oh, come quick, Mrs. Hunter!”

“Yes, yes, dear, I’ll go this minute; but what is it?” said the lady, hurrying to the entry closet for her shawl.

“Auntie is crazy! She is running round and round with the tea-kettle.”

Mrs. Hunter stood still with amazement.

“Who sent you here?” said she. “Why don’t they call the doctor?”

“I don’t know. She’s going to scald me to death, and I s’pose you know I’m sick,” whined Flaxie, sinking down on the doormat, where the light of the lamp shone full upon her, and Mrs. Hunter saw—what she might have seen before, if she had not been so nervous—that the little girl wore a checked flannel nightie, and her feet were done up in poultices.

Of course she must have come away without any one’s knowing it, that cold night, with the snow falling too! It was she that was crazy, instead of Aunt Charlotte.

“How could the child have got out of the house?” thought Mrs. Hunter.

But the question was now, how to get her back again?

“Come, Flaxie,” said she, in a soothing tone, “let me wrap you up in a shawl and take you home pickaback,—there’s a good girl!”

“But I don’t want auntie to scald me.”

“She shan’t, dear. If she has got the tea-kettle, I’ll take it away from her.”

“Honest?” asked Flaxie, piteously.

But she forgot her terror as soon as she was mounted pickaback, and thought herself the “country cousin” taking a ride on a holder.

All this while everybody in the Allen half of the house was up and hunting for the lost child. Milly was crying bitterly; Johnny had come in from the barn, where he had pulled the hay all over; and Uncle Ben, who had just returned from his journey, was starting out on the street with a lantern.

Just then Mrs. Hunter walked in, and dropped Flaxie into Aunt Charlotte’s arms, saying:

“Here, I’ve brought you a poor sick child.”

Then there was such a commotion that Flaxie was more bewildered than ever, and at sight of Uncle Ben she screamed wildly. It was his coming home about ten minutes before that had frightened her, in the first place, by waking her from a bad dream; and she had slipped out of bed, and out of the open front door, before any one missed her.

“There! there! darling, don’t cry,” said Aunt Charlotte, hushing her in her arms, while Mrs. Hunter heated a blanket.

“I’ve done something orful,” said Flaxie in her auntie’s ear. “I’m so sorry; but I stole a horse and sleigh! Don’t tell, auntie! I put ’em behind that door.”

“Well, never mind it, dear; you didn’t mean to,” said Aunt Charlotte, smiling in spite of her heavy heart. Then she turned to Uncle Ben, who stood by, looking puzzled, and asked him in a whisper if he “didn’t think he ought to go for the doctor”?

“Oh, by all means,” said Mrs. Hunter, beginning to help him on with his overcoat.

He had hurried home in the night train, on purpose to spend Christmas day with his family, and was really too tired to take a ride of two miles in a snow-storm. But he was not thinking of that; he was thinking how dreadful it was to have his dear little niece sick away from home; and how her papa didn’t like the Hilltop doctor,—and perhaps it was best to go three miles farther to the next town after Dr. Pulsifer.

“Yes, go for Dr. Pulsifer,” said Aunt Charlotte, when he asked her about it; “and be as quick as you can.”

Flaxie knew nothing of all this. Her cheeks burned, her eyes shone, and she kept saying there were a million lions and tigers in the bed; and where was the rat-trap?

“Do bring the rat-trap!” said she, plunging about in a fright. “Oh, you don’t hear, do you? There’s a woman out in the other room eating peas,—eating, and eating, and eating. Why don’t you stop her? Oh, you don’t hear! Johnny Allen, run for a sponge and vinegar, and put it in auntie’s ears, so she can hear!”

Milly laughed at these strange speeches till she heard Nancy say to Mrs. Hunter, “Crazy as a loon, ain’t she? I’m afraid it’s water on the brain.”

Then Milly, who did not understand Nancy’s meaning, but was appalled by the tone, ran into the pantry, and cried behind the flour-barrel.

“If Flaxie Frizzle dies, I want to die too! She’s the only twin cousin I’ve got in the world.”

In a short time, considering how far he had ridden, Uncle Ben came home, but without Dr. Pulsifer, who had gone away, and could not be there before to-morrow noon.

“I’m so disappointed,” said Aunt Charlotte, looking pale and ill enough herself to be in bed. “But the poor little thing is asleep now, and perhaps she isn’t so very sick after all. Do tell me if you think there’s any danger of brain-fever?”

“Well, I think this,” replied Uncle Ben, leaning over the bed and taking a long look at the little patient; “I don’t know what ails her! It may be diphtheria, and then again it may be common sore throat; but if she isn’t better in the morning, we’ll telegraph to her father, for a child that can turn yellow and pea-green, as she did last spring, is capable of almost anything.”

“That is true,” said Aunt Charlotte; “one never knows what she is going to do next.” And then she looked at Flaxie, and sighed. It was wonderful what a power she had of keeping her friends in a worry, this little pink and white slip of a girl! Once she had fallen into a brook, and once into a well, beside falling sick times without number. Uncle Ben and Aunt Charlotte knew all this, but they did not happen to know that it was a very common thing for Flaxie to be crazy! It was just so with her brother Preston and her sister Ninny; they seldom had any little ailment like a bad cold without “going out of their heads,” and nobody in the family minded it at all.

If Flaxie’s mother had been at Hilltop, she would have sent Uncle Ben and Aunt Charlotte to bed; but as she was not there, and they didn’t know any better, they sat up all night watching their queer little niece.

Rather a sorry “Christmas eve” all around the house,—but a beautiful Christmas morning, and not a cloud in the sky. Flaxie woke as gay as a bird, without the least recollection of the horrors she had suffered in the night from tigers and tea-kettles.

“Wish you merry Christmas!” cried she to pale Aunt Charlotte, and sprang out of bed with poultices on her feet to go after her Christmas stocking.

“Well, is this the little girl they thought was so sick,” said Dr. Pulsifer, when he arrived at noon, and found her and Milly lying on the rug, with a pair of twin dolls between them dressed just alike, and each with a fur cap on its head.

He felt Flaxie’s pulse and looked at her tongue, and said he “shouldn’t waste any of his nice medicine on her.”

“But my cold isn’t good at all, now honest; and my throat’s a little sore—I guess,” said Flaxie, drawing a long face, and feeling rather ashamed not to be sick now, when the doctor had been sent for on purpose!

“Never mind! If you don’t need me, your aunt does. What do you think of yourself, you little piece of mischief, running away in the night, and frightening people so that they are sick abed Christmas day?”

All Flaxie’s good time was over in a minute. Was auntie sick abed up-stairs? Was that why Flaxie hadn’t seen her since morning?

“Oh, mayn’t I go look at her?” said she, after the doctor had left. And Uncle Ben consented, thinking she wouldn’t stay a minute.

“Oh, I’m so sorry! I do love you dearly,” cried penitent Flaxie, climbing upon the bed and cuddling close to the white auntie. “Did I make you sick? I didn’t mean to; and I don’t ’member anything about the tea-kettle.”

“There, there, dear, don’t cry.”

“I oughtn’t to stayed up-stairs yesterday in the cold,” went on Flaxie, determined to free her mind. “That was the wickedest thing! But you were just as good as you could be, if you did trim the church; and I’ll never do so again!”

“Oh, hush, dear; you shake the bed.”

“I’m real bad in here, in my s-o-ul!” wailed Flaxie, squeezing her eyelids together tight, and laying her hand on her stomach. “Why don’t God make me beautiful inside o’ my soul?”

“Ask Him, dear child!”

“Will He?” said Flaxie, earnestly. “Oh, yes, I know;” and her eager face fell. “But He’ll have to make me homely to do it, just like Miss Pike.”

“Oh, no, my darling.”

“Won’t He? See what a orful cole-sore I’ve got on my mouth. If it would stay there, and stick on always, do you s’pose I’d grow good?” asked Flaxie, thoughtfully.

Aunt Charlotte almost smiled.

“’Cause I’m willing to be a little homely,—now truly—if I can have a nice so-o-ul,” added the child, with a true and deep feeling of her own naughtiness that I am sure the angels must have been glad to see.

But she was shaking the bed again, and Uncle Ben drew her gently away, and took her down stairs in his arms to finish the rest of her “crazy Christmas.”