On Christmas Day In The Evening

"Hi, there, Ol -- why not get something doing with that hammer? Don't you see the edge of that pulpit stair-carpeting is all frazzled? The preacher'll catch his toes in it, and then where'll his ecclesiastical dignity be?"

The slave-driver was Guy, shouting down from the top of a tall step-ladder, where he was busy screwing into place the freshly cleaned oil-lamps whose radiance was to be depended upon to illumine the ancient interior of the North Estabrook church. He addressed his eldest brother, Oliver, who, in his newness to the situation and his consequent lack of sympathy with the occasion, was proving but an indifferent worker. This may have been partly due to the influence of Oliver's wife, Marian, who, sitting -- in Russian sables -- in one of the middle pews, was doing what she could to depress the labourers. The number of these, by the way, had been reinforced by the arrival of the entire Fernald clan, to spend Christmas.