(12/20) No Holly for Miss Quinn by Miss Read Page A

make tiny, tiny, dear little chips and fry them in this frying pan," cried Jenny. "You can have some for supper."
    Miriam lay back on her pillow and watched them affectionately. Everything enchanted them, even the two plain aprons sent by a distant great-aunt. It was good to see such unspoilt children. Lovell and Eileen had done a good job with these two, thought their aunt proudly.
    She looked about the room, which was now beginning to get warm. The children had hung a red paper bell over the door when they had decorated the house with all the Christmas paper chains, folding fans, and other ornaments earlier in the week. It really looked rather pretty, thought Miriam, remembering how she and Lovell had always adored unfolding these showy decorations as children to deck the old Fenland vicarage. What would these children think of her own bare quarters at Holly Lodge, if they could see them?
    But something indefinable was missing. Was it the smell of tangerines?
    Before she could pin it down, Lovell came in carrying Robin with his stocking.

    "Merry Christmas!" they all shouted.
    "It's marvelously warm in here," said Lovell. "Reminds me of Christmas morning at home when we used to have the Valor Perfection stove alight in the bedroom."
    "That's it!" cried Miriam. "I've been missing the smell of paraffin!"
    "And a good thing too, I should think," said Lovell, helping his youngest to unwrap a furry panda.
    "But it was heavenly in the dark," remembered Miriam, "making lovely patterns on the ceiling."
    "And lovely smuts when it smoked," added Lovell.
    The little girls were busily opening their brother's presents and urging him to admire them. Robin appeared to be as sleepy as Miriam felt herself, and greeted each discovery with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
    "What we need," said Miriam, when the last parcel was undone and the bedroom floor was awash with Christmas wrappings, "is an early breakfast. And then you can play with your new toys before we go to church."
    Lovell had a service at eight, and Miriam proposed to take the children to the eleven o'clock service, bringing them out before the sermon.
    "But you can't leave the turkey, " protested Hazel, as though it were an invalid aunt in need of constant care.
    "I can, you know," said Miriam. "You'll see."
    "I could cook something on my stove," said Jenny. "Peas, say."
    "There'd only be a mouthful," said Hazel.
    "I could keep on cooking peas!" replied Jenny snappily. "Then there'd be enough. Fish shops keep on cooking , don't they, Aunt Miriam? Everyone has enough."
    By mid-morning tempers were beginning to fray. After such an early awakening, and now that the toys had been inspected, the children started to quarrel.
    It was the first time that Miriam had seen the two sisters at war, and she was staggered at the ferocity of the battle. She was at a loss, too, to know how best to quell this uprising.
    Robin, more animated than he had yet appeared, looked on the scene with approval, clapping his hands as Jenny clutched her sister's long hair and attempted to haul it from her scalp.
    Hazel retaliated with a resounding smack on Jenny's cheek. Screams rent the air, and Miriam rushed to part them. This was something entirely new to her. Once, she remembered, she had been called to a couple in the typing room at the office who had reduced each other to tears over some business about a boyfriend. That had been bad enough, but this was real commando stuff.
    A sharp scratch from Hazel's finger nail caused her such sudden pain that involuntarily she smacked the child's arm, and Jenny's too. The maneuver worked like a charm, both fell apart, open-mouthed with astonishment.
    "Mummy never, never hits us," exclaimed Hazel, much shocked.
    "Nor Daddy," cried Jenny, coming to her late enemy's support.
    The words: "More fool them," hovered on Miriam's lips, but she forbore to utter them. She was still suffering from pain, shock, and some shame at the violence of her reaction.
    "You can go upstairs,