“How you do it, all of a sudden like that, beats me,” said Mrs. Baker admiringly. “Why, you’re quite a poet.”
Bang! went the first cracker, between Aunt Lou and her brother-in-law Mr. Johnson. And “Hooray!” cried Luke and Jinny in unison, taking this for permission to demolish the bivouacs, and start pulling across the table.
“Not till dessert, Luke. Put those crackers back at once. Matthew, I’m ashamed of you, setting such an example.”
“I can’t wait! I can’t wait!” bellowed Tommy the Humorist, holding a cracker to each eye, and squinting through, to find out what was inside.
“There’s beef for whoever wants it,” announced the carver, flourishing the knife over a prime large turkey.
Half-way through his portion of the bird—and a well-heaped-up portion too,—Granpa thought it about time that Sebastian and Letty should be brought into prominence. Enjoining silence, as he always did before casting his pearls, he sipped his claret, coughed and choked several times, waggled an arch and shining head, and spouted:
“I can see a red-haired lover
Who’s squeezing his best girl’s hand under the table cover.
I do not think I’ve need to name him,
And all I can say is: I don’t blame him.”
“Granpa! how can you?” cried Letty, confused and blushing; “I wasn’t,—I mean, he wasn’t.”
“Bless them ... dear innocent things ...” murmured Mrs. Baker, smoothing down the front of her prune-coloured silk wrappings and excrescences and fermentations. She was fearfully and wonderfully clad, this Xmas Day. Aunt Lou eyed her with suspicion. Aunt Lou considered Granpa not too old to make an old fool of himself. She was the only spinster daughter, a rosy bouncing lady, who wasn’t likely to stand a stepmother being put over her.