Beth's Wonder-Winter by Marion Ames Taggart

"How do you keep Easter at home, Beth? I mean how _did_ you keep Easter / in your old home, Beth? We intend this to be home to you now and / henceforth, you know. " Mrs. Cortlandt smiled at Beth over a book which / she held, but which, plainly, did not engage her attention.

"Keep Easter? " echoed Beth searching her memory for the right answer. / "Why, I don't know. We -- -- Sometimes the daffodils are out, sometimes / they're not. Janie and I color eggs; just a few. Aunt Rebecca never / likes me to use many. She thinks the colors and pictures hurt the eggs / for eating, but they really don't. When Easter comes in April hens / are apt to be setting, so eggs are rather scarce. But coloring them / doesn't do a bit of harm, if only Aunt Rebecca thought so. She says / it takes away her appetite to see red rabbits, and rabbits in coats, / and blue stripes, and pink flowers, on her breakfast egg. I asked her / to scramble it, or poach it, so she wouldn't see the decorations. She / thought I was saucy, but I didn't once think of being. You can get / lovely designs and colors in a package, eight colors and a hundred / pictures for five cents, and you can make shaded colors and change / around a lot with the eight sheets. I'd like to fix eggs for everybody, / but it's no use! " Beth shook her head over the unreasonableness of / Aunt Rebecca. "Janie and I do them for each other, though, and we fix / up a strawberry basket nest with tissue papers and leave it on each / other's back porch. A German girl showed us about it; the Easter rabbit / lays the eggs there, you see! It's quite nice. We don't do anything / else special, unless it is to wear our straw hat for the first time, / and open our collection boxes in Sunday-school. Oh, yes! We all get a / growing geranium slip, or some plant in Sunday-school that day."