That New Silk Hat

       The child sat before the tinsel-draped and popcorn-festooned Christmas tree, chin in hand, as her big brown eyes danced from one glittering wrapped package to another. She hummed a medley of off-tune carols and fingered the gold ribbon of a very suspiciously spherical gift.
       "Theresa, don't you think we could give her one early?" the child's father whispered plaintively from the kitchen doorway as he stared into the adjacent living room. "Watching her sit there and stare at them is just depressing."
       Theresa sipped her already cooling coffee and shook her head firmly. "You spoil her too much, Duncan. It's only Christmas Eve morning. There's still a whole day before the presents are unwrapped."
       "But we already agreed to give her one after service tonight anyway," Duncan replied, stuffing his hands defensively into his bathrobe pockets. "What harm could it do to give it to her now?"
       "May I remind you that you're the only one who agreed to that idea?" she countered evenly, turning the page of the newspaper with a silent hand. She glanced in her husband's direction and failed to suppress a laugh. "Don't look at me like that. Now I know where she gets her puppy-dog eyes."
       "Theresa," he pleaded quietly, "It's just one little gift!"
       Sighing wispily, she shook her head. "No wonder she's a daddy's girl."
       Duncan perked up. "So she can?"
       Theresa frowned to mask the involuntary smile that crept up on her and nodded.
       With a ridiculously wide grin, Duncan pecked his wife on the cheek before he nonchalantly sauntered into the living room, whistling along to whatever song his daughter was humming.
"Ivy," he started casually, "Whatcha doin'?"
       Ivy quickly snatched her hand away from the gift tag she was toying with. "Oh," she replied, looking devilishly innocent, "Nothing."
       Duncan squatted down beside her and pretended to be interested in a small toy bicycle hung on the tree. "Are you excited for Santa to come tonight?" he asked, pulling some dead needles off the branch in front of him.
       Ivy turned to him and nodded enthusiastically, her big brown curls bouncing around her face. "Is he going to bring more presents? More than this?"
       Duncan grinned and took another look under the tree. The five or six packages that his and Theresa's relatives had sent early made a colourful little pile beneath its branches. "Yes, Ivy," he responded mischievously, "A few more than this."
       Ivy's round cheeks plumped with her smile. "He's gonna come on a sleigh, right dad? A big one? That flies in the sky, with reindeer? And he lands on the roof, right dad? And Rudolph's gonna be there too, right?" Her sparkler of self-answered questions fizzled out, and she turned her gaze back to the presents under the tree. Then she stretched out on her stomach and propped her head in her hands. "I'm excited for Santa to come tonight, dad," she said through her little fingers.
       Duncan patted her head gently. "Say, Ivy," he stage whispered, loud enough for Theresa to hear,  "Do you want to open one right now?"
       She flipped on her side and gazed at her father with wide doe-eyes. Scrambling to sit upright, she said, "Right – right now?"
       "Yeah, right now. Instead of after church tonight. Whaddya say?"
       Ivy gasped and dramatically clapped her hand over her mouth. She quickly turned her attention to her mother standing in the kitchen doorway and asked tentatively, "Can I, mummy? Please?"
       Theresa gave her a soft smile and a single nod. "Only one though, okay?"
       Letting out a quiet squeal, Ivy clapped her hands together and spun around on her knees to select her first victim.
       Duncan started, "Now pick carefully, Ivy. Make sure it's a good one! Choose whichever you want."
       Ivy didn't reply, her five-year-old brain already weighing the positives and negatives of each glossy parcel. Finally decided, she lunged forward and grasped a long rectangular box wrapped in candy-cane stripes and green ribbon floss.
       "Ah ah," her dad said, snatching the gift from her hands. "Except the one from Grandma."
       Ivy's eyebrows furrowed in the middle and her mouth squeezed into a fish-like pucker. Before she could retaliate with a very indignant, "Why?", Duncan suggested, "Try opening Aunt Laurie's package." He placed the large, perfectly square box in front of her, and her face lit up.
       With a quick glance at both her parents, she licked her lips, grabbed a handful of paper Santa faces, and pulled. The hiss of tearing gift-wrap filled every seam in the walls of the living room as Ivy eagerly unwrapped her present. Her little heart seemed about to burst from excitement before the gift would be revealed, but the paper quickly disappeared into the corner of the room, leaving Ivy alone with a very naked and very colourful cardboard box.
       "Ooh, Ivy," her mother cooed, "Do you know what that is?"
       Ivy worked her little confused mouth around as she picked up the box to look at it from all sides.
       "What does it say, chickee?" her father pressed excitedly.
       " 'M-magic. A twenty-four piece magic set for budding magicians,' " she finished properly. Setting the box back onto the floor, her fingers burrowed like roots into the cracks of the box to pry the lid open.
       "Twenty-four pieces? Jesus, tell your sister to send something with more parts to it next time," Duncan called to his wife sarcastically as his daughter lifted out all the individually wrapped plastic toys.
       "Ooo, look! A big deck of cards, and a bunch of flowers, and a – a colourful scarf –"
       "At least I convinced her to let the Barbie Dreamhouse idea go," Theresa whispered back as Ivy was distracted. Duncan shook his head.
       " – and a bunny!" Ivy squealed, "Look, Dad! A real bunny!"
       "I don't think it's real, honey," her mother responded simply. "They wouldn't wrap him in plastic if he was real, right?"
       "Oh yeah," Ivy supposed, handing the package to her father, who was opening each piece like an assembly-line worker. The next part of the kit came in its own little box, so Ivy plucked open the top and dumped out its contents. A polished black wooden rod tipped with a white rubber stopper slid into her waiting hand. Ivy closed her fingers around it reverently.
       "It's a magic wand," she muttered like a prayer. Her demeanour changed suddenly, and she brandished the wand with a flourish.
       "Uh oh," Duncan said mischievously as he routed through what was left in the box, "Look what we have here."
       Ivy tried peeking over her father's shoulder, but Duncan said, "Okay Ivy, close your eyes and stand back." She eagerly did as she was told, standing on her tiptoes and holding her body rigid. Her eyes began to ache with how tightly she was squinting them. Suddenly, something fell onto her head, and she made a funny little noise in the back of her throat.
       "Hey!" she called, reaching up to the object sitting on her head. She felt the hard round brim of a hat, and pulled it off to look at it.
       "It goes with your wand," Duncan commented cheekily as Ivy held it out to examine it at arm's length. The tall bowl of the top hat shone with a silky glow in the coloured lights of the Christmas tree, and Ivy spun it around in her hands. "It's a real magic hat," she said with a grin and jammed it back on her head. She pushed her displaced hair out of her eyes with the back of one hand and readied her wand with the other. Smiling a gap-toothed grin, she began to march around the living room, through the kitchen and back again, flinging her wand around high above her head and giving useless commands.
       "What do ya know," Duncan mused, "It's a hit."
       "No kidding," Theresa murmured, bending around her distended belly to pluck the discarded plastic wrap from the floor. Rising to his feet with a strained stretch and a loud yawn, Duncan nodded his head in the direction of their child who was now standing on the sofa like a soapbox, singing 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' in a little voice.
       "Are you going to be a magician now, Ivy, or a musician?" Theresa asked as her daughter waved the wand around as if she were conducting a symphony.
       "Musician," Duncan scoffed, playfully knocking the hat over Ivy's eyes. "You look more like Frosty the Snowman."
       Ivy stopped her frolicking suddenly and pulled the tall hat off her head. Holding it in front of her, she ogled at it, and as her father watched, her eyes became wider and wider until Duncan feared they would engulf her whole face.
       "Dad," she stated. "Daddy."
       "What?" he replied, concerned at her wild-eyed stare.
       "Dad!" she repeated excitedly, "It's Frosty's hat! It's his magic hat!"
       "Yes, it does look like his hat, doesn't it?"
       "No, daddy, it is his! Look at it! It's Frosty's hat, dad!"
       "Now Ivy, just because it looks the same doesn't mean it's the real thing," her mother explained delicately. "It's just a normal hat."
       "No it's not!" Ivy protested hotly. "It's magic! Look at the box!" she demanded, pointing an accusing finger at the limp cardboard packaging at her feet.
       "Alright, alright, it's magic," Duncan conceded quickly.
       "Duncan!" Theresa chided, but he stalled her complaints with a raised hand.
       "But you won't know for sure until you try it out, right?"
       Ivy's little eyebrows pulled together in deep thought. "Try it out? You mean," she started, growing ever more excited as the words came tumbling out of her mouth, "I have to make a Frosty?! Make a Frosty, dad? And put it his hat on his head?"
       Duncan tried to interject. "Whoa, whoa, slow down there, partner," he said as he tried to backtrack.
       Ivy's young mind was so fixed on the idea that she failed to hear her father at all and continued, "And then when the hat's on his head he can come to life! Right, dad? Right? Then I'll have my own Frosty! My very own Frosty the Snowman!!" Ivy jumped up and down three or four times before she leapt off the sofa and bolted out of the living room and into the foyer.
       "Ivy!" Theresa called, "Ivy! Come here, please, I need to explain something –"
       "It's no use, Terry," Duncan interjected as Ivy flew past them again, her puffy winter jacket billowing out behind her. She clomped her booted way to the sliding glass door and heaved on the lever with all her might. The door rumbled in its tracks, reluctant to be moved so early in the morning, but soon let in a brisk blast of icy air.
       "Don't you dare go out there without mittens, missy!"
       Ivy was already wading through the drift of snow that had piled up against the house as she responded, "I don't need them!"
       "Ivy!" her mother cried crossly as she vanished around the side of the back deck.
       "Theresa, don't worry. She'll come back for them when her hands get cold."
       Ivy trudged back a few steps, and turned around to face her parents with a frown. "I need my snowpants."
       "And your mittens," Theresa added grumpily, walking back through the room and into the foyer.  She returned with every other unmentioned piece of winter gear and helped her child struggle into the snowsuit.
       Now newly kitted out, Ivy braved the arctic tundra of the backyard eagerly, jumping energetically over the hidden white hedgerows. Duncan watched in amazement as his daughter flopped onto her knees on the flat white plain and began to gather up heaps of snow in her tiny arms.
       "You're the one who said, 'try it out'," she scolded him.
       "Hey, hey!" he raised his hands innocently in the air, "I only meant for her to wave the wand around and pull a rabbit out of it, that's all. She came up with that Frosty schtick on her own."
       "You're incorrigible."

       Ivy wrestled with the oblong boulder of snow until it grudgingly decided to stay precariously balanced on top of its larger counterpart. Stepping back through her tracks, she turned to admire her handiwork. The base of the three-tiered snowman was by far the largest and most bale-shaped – the wet snow had rolled up like a carpet around her snowball, making the snowman seem as if he were standing on a gigantic cinnamon roll. The two smaller balls were about equal in size, and the head had accumulated some dried maple leaves that had remained buried under the old snow until she'd scooped them up.
       Her mouth fell into a frustrated frown. It looked nothing like the real Frosty. But the concept of creating a snowman actually shaped like a person eluded her, so the triple snowball effect remained. She decided he still needed arms, and went wandering off in the small stand of trees behind the house. The deep snow made it almost impossible to find any branches on the ground, but with squirrel-like agility, she wrested two perfect limbs from the clutches of a naked tree.
       Ivy stuck a branch into each side and grinned as her creation seemed to celebrate its birth with outstretched arms. Now as excited as the snowman, she rushed back to the flowerpot on the back deck where her mother kept round river stones for her garden and gathered a bunch in her woolly mittens. A few of them slid into the snow with soundless plops as she tottered back over to the mound of snow. After removing a few of the leaves from his head with a brown scowl, she just barely managed to reach his face to press in two stones for eyes and another five for a impossibly smiley mouth. The rest were used as buttons down his middle. Pushing the last stone into place with one bare finger, she hopped back a few steps and looked up into his grinning face. Her smile waned and was soon replaced with confusion. Something was missing! After a few long moments of thought, it came to her, and she whirled around and galloped back to the house, tripping up the back stairs in her excitement.
       "Mum!" she cried, wrestling the sliding door which tried its hardest to remain closed. "Mummy!"
       "Yes, Ivy? What is it?" Theresa responded, wiping her soapy hands on a tea towel.
       "I need a carrot!"
       "Carrot? What for?"
       "For his nose!" she emphasized, pushing at the recoiling door.
       Theresa peered out the kitchen window into the back yard. "Ah," she said. She turned back into the kitchen slowly and searched through the fridge's vegetable drawers. Ivy bounced on her knees in anticipation until Theresa returned and handed her a long tuber. Ivy ogled it suspiciously.
       "And where would your mittens be?" she said as she noticed her daughter's bare hands.
       "Mum, this carrot is white."
       Theresa sighed quietly. "That's because it's not a carrot. It's a parsnip."
       "But he can't have a parsnip nose!"
       "Well, I'm sorry. I'm out of carrots. They're all cooking in the stew."
       Her daughter's mouth pulled down in a severe frown as she continued to stare at the root.
       "It's either that or a radish, darling."
       "Radish…" she mused, glancing over her shoulder at the expectant snowman. "Nah, a parsnip's good." She pulled her head out of the doorway and hastened back down the steps as the door rolled eagerly back into place.
       Ivy triumphantly stabbed the end of the parsnip into the snowman's face, the force of which separated his head from the rest of his body. With a wide-eyed start, she caught the back of his head with her free hand and gently set it right. She carefully screwed his nose the rest of the way in before stepping away again, shaking her hands from the cold of the snow. As she picked up her discarded mittens, she glanced at her new friend's forked hands and smiled. She pulled off her scarf as well, and added her clothing to the snowman's bare form.
       Now virtually complete, the snowman seemed quite content to stand in the yard all day, but Ivy was certain that would change once the finishing touch was added. Filled with bubbling anticipation, she pounded back up the steps and into the house, boots and all.
       "Ivy, Ivy, Ivy," her father chided from his position on the couch, "you're tracking snow everywhere!"
       "I need his hat!" was her only reply, racing from the foyer back into the living room.
       Duncan craned his neck to see over the back of the sofa and out the glass door. "Ah," he said. He levered himself to his feet after dog-earing the place in his book, as Ivy streamed past him on her way outside. He wandered into the foyer and pulled on his giant winter boots, and headed out to the backyard. He watched Ivy trudge along her worn path, eyeing both the top of the snowman's head and the tall hat in her hands. Duncan rubbed his arms as the chill of winter slipped through the knit of his sweater. She stopped in front of her creation and paused almost reverently before standing on her tiptoes and reaching up to place the hat on his head. The height was just perfectly out of her reach, though she tried her best to extend every fibre in her limbs to make herself taller. One of the stone buttons on the snowman's midsection was lost in the snow at his feet, jostled loose by her antics.
       Finally conceding to her ineptitude, Ivy turned away with a sour expression and called, "Dad!"
       "Yes?" Duncan replied with a grin.
       She started at the sight of him already on the stairs, then resumed her scowl. "I need some help," she admitted reluctantly.
       "I can see that," he said quietly, making his way through the snow. "So you want me to put it on for you?"
       "No," she answered stubbornly. "Lift me up so I can put it on by myself."
       "Eh?" he said, cupping his hand to his ear, "I don't think I heard the magic word in there."
       Ivy took a deep breath. "Can you lift me up please?"
       "Yes, I can." He rubbed his hands together and flexed his knees. "Alright, here I go. You ready?"
       She grinned and spun around, holding the hat like she was a professional basketball player going for a free throw. "Ready," she claimed.
       "One, two, three!" Duncan hoisted his daughter into the air with a heave of his arms. Ivy squealed as she was tossed into the air and caught again.
       "Too high, dad! I can't put it on in the air!" She squirmed in her father's arms, her purple snow boots dangling in the white space.
       "Okay, okay. Put it on then. Jeez, you're heavier than you look, you know."
       The silk hat was slick in her suddenly sweaty hands, but she was able to hold on with pure excitement. Slowly, she lowered the top hat onto the snowman's mottled head like one would crown a king. When it finally settled properly, she snapped back her arms to her chest and yelled, "It's on! It's on! Put me down!"
       Duncan stepped back and set Ivy down into the snow. She bounced on her knees in her eagerness, waiting for sparks to fly or fairy dust to erupt from underneath the brim of the hat.
       "Well, would you look at that," Duncan said in awe. "I think that is by far the best looking Frosty I have ever seen! The hat really goes with the pink polka dot scarf. Good call on that one."
       Ivy didn't respond, but her bouncing slowly subsided as the seconds ticked by. "Are you gonna move, Frosty?" she whispered anxiously.
       "Maybe he's too cold," her father replied facetiously. Ivy glared at him from the corner of her eye. "It was a joke!" he whispered back.
       She turned her attention back to the grinning snowman. After a minute more of staring, she threw her arms majestically up in the air, wiggled all her fingers and said, "Abra kadabra, alakazam!" and pointed at him.
       "I'm not so sure that's the right phrase to use in this situation," Duncan noted delicately.
       "Should I use 'open sesame' instead?" she asked seriously, her fingers still held out in front of her.
       "Um, no. Maybe you were right afterall."
       She said it again and again, waving her arms all over, but the snowman remained more snow than man. Her antics had roused Old Freder, their elderly German neighbour, and Duncan peeked over the fence to chat with him about the snowman until they both retired from the cold.
       Eventually Ivy moved on to other spells and even took to chanting around the snowman like a ceremonial fire. When that failed to produce any results, she went back inside to get her magic wand. She waved it with authority and even sang 'Frosty the Snowman', but received not even a wink in return. Ivy got so frustrated she rounded out a big ball of snow and threw it at him, but felt sorry for it immediately and apologized. She took to walking around him in circles and looking up into his grinning stony face whenever it came into view, waiting for the miracle to happen.

       The sun was setting early and the white of the backyard soon turned into a stone cold blue. Theresa watched Ivy from the patio door as she sat on the bottom stair and picked the bark off a small green twig. Quietly, she slid open the door and stepped out onto the porch. She sighed a small cloud into the icy air and rubbed her arms.
       "Ivy, honey, it's just about time for the Morris' Christmas party. Why don't you come inside and put on your pretty Christmas dress, okay?"
       Ivy turned and looked forlornly at her mother. "But what about Frosty?" she pouted.
       "When he decides to start moving, he can come join us, but we have to go get ready now."
       The frown on her face seemed to reach to her toes as she came to her feet like an arthritic old woman. She wandered back into the house dejectedly, her snowpants and jacket sighing with every slow, heavy step. With one last ounce of hope, she glanced back over her shoulder at the abominable heap of snow, which remained quite stationary. Stepping over the breach to the inside of the living room, she hung her head as the sliding door rumbled shut behind her.

       "It's way past your bedtime, missy, so straight upstairs to the bathroom and washup for bed," Theresa said, draping her velvet shawl over a hook by the front door. Ivy hurriedly kicked off her little Mary Janes and dropped her peacoat to the floor, rushing past the stairs and into the living room.
       "Ivy, what did I just say?" her mother scolded.
       "I know! I just wanna see…" she trailed off as she peered through the glass, over the banister and into the backyard. The neighbours' multicoloured lights illuminated the yard enough to see that her snowman was as immobile as it was this afternoon. She sighed wispily as the lights changed colours and made her breath on the glass door fade from pink to green.
       "Come on, sweetie. Santa might just have to skip our house if a certain little girl takes too long getting into bed," Theresa said, brushing her finger over her daughter's round cheek. She ushered her daughter over to the stairwell and Duncan tickled her all the way up the stairs and into the bathroom.
       Theresa waited until Ivy's bedroom door clicked shut before scooting over to the basement and inching her way down to the cellar. She emerged seconds later with shopping bags of wrapped presents, which she slipped into Duncan and Ivy's stockings hung hopefully underneath the mantelpiece.
       After she was done, she crept up the stairs and made it halfway down the hall to her bedroom before Duncan called out, "Don't you dare come in here."
       She covered a snicker with the tips of her fingers. "You're not still wrapping, are you?"
       There was a long pause in which the sound of Scotch tape being cut was evident. "Maybe," he responded quietly. Theresa shook her head and stroked her round belly unconsciously. "If you could put on some cider, I'll be down before it's ready."
       "Alright, alright. Bring the bag under the bed when you come down."
       "There's a bag under the bed?"
       "And one in the linen closet."
       "…How many gifts did you buy?"
       "Enough."
       He snorted, and that was the end of it.

       Ivy lay in her brass-framed bed, watching the lights outside the window twinkle off the shiny knobs on each post. Distantly, she recalled a man on her tape-recorder singing pleasantly about old toy trains, little toy tracks, and perhaps something about a mountain called Douglas. Or was it a bear called Douglas? Either way, she dreamt of falling snow.

       As Duncan came downstairs with armloads of gifts, some better wrapped than others, the scent of mulled apple cider and balsam fir wafted up to him from the living room. He tucked the last of the packages under the tree and into Terry's stocking before tucking himself in a seat beside her and tucking into the warm drink.
       "Mmm, this is nice," she murmured, settling even further back into the plush couch.
       "Yeah. It was surprisingly relaxing. Christmas Eve normally drives me nuts."
       "No pun intended?"
       "None."
       She sighed again. "If it weren't for that stupid snowman, it would have been great for Ivy too."
       "Oh, would you lay off the snowman? She'll forget about it by morning when she sees all these presents."
       "I sure hope so."
       "Just relax. Enjoy the soft lights and the peace and quiet. Listen to the hum of the radiators as they joyfully drive up our heating bill…"
       Theresa turned and slapped him on the arm. "Dummy." Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the sight of something shimmering, and she shifted her weight to look at it. Gasping, she said, "Oh, Duncan, look."
       He flipped around and looked out the window into the backyard. With a wry smile, he replied, "They were calling for more snow, weren't they."
       "It's so pretty. And on Christmas Eve too."
       They sat for a while watching the tiny silvery snowflakes flicker in and out of the light, dusting the already white world with a little more sparkle.

       "Daddy! Daddy daddy daddy! Wake up wake up!"
       Duncan shook open his eyes and lowered his numb arms from above his head. "What? Hmmm, oh yes. It's Christmas," he said, sitting up and rubbing feeling back into his arms. "Merry Christmas, chickee," he yawned, ruffling the mop of curls on his daughter's head.
       "No, daddy! You've gotta come see Frosty!!"
       His 6 AM brain hadn't quite made it out of first gear yet. "What?"
       "Frosty! You gotta come see Frosty! The snowman??" she emphasized.
       "Oh, oh, okay. I'm coming, I'm coming."
       He wrestled himself into his bathrobe, and shook his wife awake.
       "Terry. It's Christmas."
       "Mmm?" she rubbed her face awake and stretched. "Ah, Merry Christmas sweetie," she said to Ivy, smiling through her yawn.
       "Mummy! You've gotta see Frosty too! Come on!" Ivy bounced on her heels before disappearing out of their room, the ringed tail of her plush raccoon whisking around the doorframe.
       "What's she on about?" Theresa said, untangling her nightgown from the bedsheets.
       "I don't know. Something about her snowman?" He shrugged and followed his daughter downstairs.
       "Wahow," he said in mock surprise as the shining tree came into sight, "Did Santa come or what, huh?"
       "Yeah!" she yelled, running instead over to the back door. "See daddy? Look! Daddy, do you see? Frosty's there! He's right there!"
       He wandered over to the patio doors and peered out through the frosted glass. "He's there alright."
       "No dad. He moved. He used to be there and now he's there." Duncan craned his neck over to the side yard and saw a bare patch of grass where something heavy and white had obviously stood until very recently, and followed the deep round impressions with his eyes until his gaze came to the foot of the snowman, standing directly at the bottom of the stairs.
       "You know something? He most certainly did."
       "Isn't he holding something?" Theresa, who had crept up behind them, noted quietly.
       Ivy dipped her head back and forth until she could see the snowman's mitted hands. She sucked in her breath. "You're right!"
       "Ah, ah!" her mother chided as Ivy heaved on the door handle. "Boots first!"
       Ivy dashed across the room and back before tearing open the sliding door. As she waded through the new snow and stumbled down the steps, her mother turned to her father and whispered, "Now that was genius."
       Duncan snorted in astonishment. "You said it. I would never have thought to move the damn thing myself. You're so thoughtful," he pinched his wife cheek playfully. "How did you lift it? Looks like it weighs a tonne."
       "Are you serious?" she scowled at him. "You're trying to play dumb with me?"
       "What are you talking about?" he said, straight-faced.
       She paused and stared at him. "You're trying to tell me you think I moved it?"
       "Didn't you?" he asked in confusion.
       "Didn't you?"
       "I didn't touch it."
       "Oh come on," she insisted. "You really didn't move it?"
       "I swear, Terry. I didn't touch the damn thing."
       They stared at each other in complete confusion as Ivy tromped back up the steps and into the house. "Look, mummy! Look what Frosty brought me!" She held up a little red ribbon and tied at the end was a pinecone, an acorn, and a sprig of holly. "There's a note too. He says, 'Merry Christmas'," she read the handwritten tag slowly to decipher the calligraphy.
       "Well," Theresa started carefully, "He must have really liked that new silk hat you gave him."
       Ivy's eyes lit up like the lights on the glistening tree behind her. "I bet he did!"
       Duncan said softly, "That's some hat, huh, Ivy?"
       She turned back to stare out the window, the snow from her boots already soaking into the carpet. "It's the best hat, ever."