The Middle Moffat by Eleanor Estes

Author:Eleanor Estes [Estes, Eleanor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780152025236
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2012-10-09T08:01:24+00:00

In excitement she called Joe and Rufus in to see the finished bag. She dangled it before them, walked mincingly with it on her arm as elegant ladies do, thinking perhaps she looked like Mrs. Stokes.

"Is that a brockated bag?" they asked wonderingly.

"Yes!" said Jane. "Isn't it lovely?" And she walked up to the mirror to look at herself with the pretty thing. Her eyes fell on the bag. What they saw there was a very plain blue calico bag with a crooked MAMA embroidered on one side and a humped-back daisy on the other. She looked down at the real bag hanging on her arm. The fair vision of the brocaded bag vanished completely and forever. She fell silent. The boys said nothing. After all, they had never seen a brocaded bag. In a while Jane said thoughtfully, "It will be good to keep buttons in."

They wrapped it up and made a card for it, "To Mama, with love from Joe, Rufus, and Jane," and hid it where Mama would not be able to find it.

At last it was Christmas Eve. The four Moffats were making decorations for the tree, angels of gold and silver paper, baskets for candy and cookies, chains of colored paper, cornucopias for popcorn. The kitchen table was quite covered with scraps of paper and sticky with flour-and-water paste, which Rufus had dabbed around by mistake. Sylvie had shown him how to make the chains of circles of bright paper. It was true that all of his chains were not linked together properly. His chain broke into short separate links that hung aimlessly from the whole. However, Sylvie said this did not matter in the slightest. Sylvie and Mama were going to help Santa Claus out by having the tree trimmed before he came, late tonight. At present they were busy making the spiced Santa Claus cookies for the tree. How good they did smell!

"It is time now to hang your stockings," said Mama.

The four of them, even Sylvie, tore off to their rooms to find stockings that didn't have any holes in them so none of the good things would fall out of the heel or toe. They tacked these onto the wainscoting behind the kitchen stove, right handy for Santa Claus.

Now there was really nothing to do but go to bed. Rufus and Janey went first. They stripped off their clothes before the kitchen fire. They put on their outing flannel bed-socks and nightclothes and raced noisily up the stairs to bed.

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