"When there are no children about," he succeeded in saying, as an amend for his slip.
"There are two in our house, besides myself," she said gayly.
"Splendid!" he cried enthusiastically. "Can't we have a tree?"
On the platform at Princeton he was introduced to two small and very pretty young ladies, six and eight, and to a resentful gallant aged nine, who seemed to look upon him with disfavor. It afterwards developed that he was the characteristic neighbor boy who loves beyond his years. He adored Miss Pembroke.
"Mr. Van Pycke is coming down for Christmas," announced Miss Pembroke, in course of time, drawing her little sisters close to her side and smiling upon the dazzled gallant, aged nine.
"Will you play bear for me?" asked the young lady aged six, after a sly look at her nurse.
"The whole menagerie," said Mr. Van Pycke, most obligingly. Then, having occupied a perilously long time in shaking hands with the girl in the Persian lamb, he rushed off in response to the station master's satirical warning that last night's train was just pulling out for New York.
"I know just what's going to happen to me," he said to himself, jubilantly, as he waved to her from the window. "I can feel it coming."