"You have done quite right," said Papa. "Mamma does not like dark colours. Everything about her is to be bright and gay."
Now the boys were permitted to come in.
They held their beautifully written Christmas poems carefully in their hands and rubbed their sides timidly against the door-posts.
"Come, be cheerful," said Papa. "Do you think your heads will be torn off to-day?"
And then he took them both into his arms and squeezed them a little so that Arthur's poetry was crushed right down the middle.
That was a misfortune, to be sure. But Papa consoled the boy, saying that he would be responsible since it was his fault.
Brueggemann, the long, lean private tutor, now stuck his head in the door, too. He had on his most solemn long coat, nodded sadly like one bidden to a funeral, and sniffed through his nose:
"Yes—yes—yes—yes—"
"What are you sighing over so pitiably, you old weeping-willow?" Papa said, laughing. "There are only merry folk here. Isn't it so, Brigitta?"
"Of course that is so," the girl said. "And here, Doctor, is your Christmas plate." She led him to his place where a little purse of calf's leather peeped modestly out from, under the cakes.