"I have found out," wrote Guy in his best handwriting, "that the difference in time between New York and San Francisco is about three hours and a quarter. So if you sit down to your dinner at a quarter past four o'clock, your time, and we sit down to our dinner at one o'clock, our time, we can in that way be dining together. We are going to have for dinner exactly what we had at home on last Christmas. But you will have the best time, for grandfather and grandmother will be with you, and Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary, and Ben, Tom, Bertha, Sadie, Uncle Seth, and all the rest of them."
A few days after this letter was sent Mr. Benson mailed another one, in which he told his wife that Guy had made a discovery on the previous day, and they were going to send her a pleasant surprise--in fact, a Christmas present. "The package will be sent by express, directed to your address in New York," wrote Mr. Benson, "and we have so timed its journey East that it will reach you some time on the day before Christmas."
But didn't Mrs. Benson wonder and wonder what was coming to her for a surprise present? And didn't she imagine that it might be a nest of Chinese tables, or a package of fine Russian tea, or an ivory castle, or a bunch of California grapes weighing fifteen or twenty pounds, or five-and-twenty other possible things? Then Guy's New York cousins, when they heard of that expected package, didn't they all fall to guessing? And they guessed and guessed until, as we say in "Hot Butter and Blue Beans, please come to Supper," they were "cold," "very cold," and "freezing."
Cousin Ben finally decided, after changing his mind a dozen times a day, that the package would prove to contain either the skin of the grizzly bear that Guy, before leaving home, had thought he might find, or a big piece of gold that Guy had been kindly allowed to dig out of some gold mine.
"Heigho! this is the day the package is to come," said Cousin Bertha, the moment she awoke on that morning. But at noon-time Bertha, Ben, Jim, Sadie, and even little Tom, knew that as yet the package had not arrived. It had not arrived as late as four o'clock in the afternoon, when the first three just mentioned, together with some of their elders, went to Guy's mother's to supper. There Bertha, Ben, and Jim took turns vainly watching at the windows for the express wagon, until they were called to supper.
