They had not decided what to give Peter on Christmas morning, and it seemed too bad, for when Billy and Betty went out to the barn each creature seemed to be enjoying the tree very much. The hens were clucking, Bessie was neighing, and Shep was walking round and round the tree, smelling of his bones. And there sat Peter, right under the tree, and looking up into its green branches.
"Poor Peter!" Betty said, "with no Christmas present."
But just then Peter jumped right up into the Christmas tree in the barn and came down with a little gray mouse in his mouth! The mouse had been nibbling the corn in the Christmas stockings, but Peter thought it was his Christmas gift. So the tree was quite perfect, and all the barn enjoyed it very much indeed.
When mother was making plans for a "safe and sane Fourth," Uncle Henry said, "Why not take the children to the park and have a kite party? I'll help them make the kites."
The next morning Harry and Anna were busy out on the piazza with Uncle Henry. By ten o'clock three handsome white kites were drying in a row. Anna called them the "Big Bear, the Middle-Sized Bear, and the Baby Bear."
When the kites were dry, the whole family started for the park--Uncle Henry with the Big Bear and a box of luncheon, Harry with the Middle-Sized Bear, and Anna, of course, with the Baby Bear. Mother carried some sewing and grandmother carried the surprise, something that Uncle Henry had brought home in a flat box. When they reached the park, they found a French society holding a picnic. A tent was up, the band was playing, the older boys were shooting at a target, and the little boys and girls were flying red and blue balloons.
Uncle Henry said, "Ladies first, always," and he soon had the Baby Bear in the air, and the string in Anna's hands. He drove the bobbin into the ground, to make sure that the kite would not get away. Harry insisted upon putting his kite up alone. Then Uncle Henry put up the Big Bear, and when it was up some distance, he asked grandmother to open the box. Then he shook out a red-white-and-blue silk American flag, and the crowd cheered.
Uncle Henry tied the flag to a loop of string, and fastened it to the Big Bear's string. Then he let it out, hand over hand. Up, up, went Old Glory, and snapped in the breeze. The higher it went, the farther out the kite soared, until it hung over the harbor. They were all so busy watching it that they had not seen that the picnic people below were pointing up to the flag; but when the band struck up the Star-Spangled Banner, and the foreign people began to sing, Uncle Henry noticed one dark-skinned boy who sang with a strange accent and great energy, and who kept his big, solemn eyes on the flag that glowed against the sky. But when the boy, whose name was Caspar, saw the others looking at him, he ran down the hill and hid behind the children.