"But don't you see," replied poor grandmamma, beginning to cry again, "how doubly painful and trying it is for me? Four Christmases he has been away in America and God knows where else, and now, when he has come home, he treats me like this."
"Just wait another quarter of an hour," implored Hertha; "it's the bad weather, I am sure, that is keeping him away."
And they waited, not a quarter, but half an hour, and then the Mamselle came in.
"I can't manage the people any longer," she announced. "The children are crying, and the men say they'll go home."
"Come!" said grandmamma, resolutely; "we must begin without him."
The three who had decked the trees went to light them up, leaving the cousins alone. A breathless stillness reigned in the house.
"Do you think," Elly asked, still playing with the fringe of the table-cloth, "that I shall have any anonymous presents?"
Hertha shrugged her shoulders and disdained to reply. And then the bell rang. Hertha felt the same eager anxiety as in childhood as with trembling hands she gathered her presents together and took them to the salon.
The folding doors were flung wide, and she was met by a flood of soft light from hundreds of lighted tapers. The spacious room was filled with the brilliance and fragrance of three giant fir-trees. One for the family, one for the servants and tenants, and a third for the ragged school. On long tables with spotless white cloths plate after plate was ranged, and beside them were parcels of warm petticoats, shoes, caps, comforters, and stockings, the knitting of which had occupied grandmamma's busy hands all through the spring and hot summer days. For the children, besides the useful garments and the sweets, were piles of cheap tops, for, as grandmamma said, "we all must be young once."
In they poured by the opposite door with happy faces, and those of them who had threatened to storm the entrance a few minutes ago were the very ones who now sidled along the wall, too shy to approach the tables. They let themselves, at last, be brought forward one by one, and then eyed their property with sidelong glances as if they would have to steal it before it could be really their own. Hertha had so much to do in encouraging, explaining, and leading people to their plates, that she had no time to think of her own presents.