“Better than the writing-case Uncle Samuel gave me?”
“Much better.”
“Oh, Jeremy!” She suddenly flung her arms round his neck and kissed him. Hamlet barked and escaped the brush and comb, then seized Mary’s hair ribbon, that had, as usual, fallen to the floor, and ran with it to a distant corner. Incidents followed that had nothing to do with presents.
Then when Christmas Day grew very near indeed, those parcels at the bottom of his play-box became an obsession. He went up a hundred times a day to look at them, to take them out and stroke them, to feel their knobs and protruding angles, to replace them, first in this way and then in that. Sometimes he laid them all out upon the bed, sometimes he spread them in a long line across the carpet. He brought up Hamlet and made him look at them. Hamlet sniffed each parcel, then wanted to tear the paper wrappings; finally, he lay on the carpet and rattled in his throat, wagging his tail and baring his teeth.
Christmas Eve arrived, a beautiful, clear, frosty day.
III
Jeremy came in from his morning walk, his cheeks crimson, looking very nautical in his blue reefer coat. He went straight up to his room, locked the door, and opened the play-box. The parcels were all there. He counted them, felt them, sighed a sigh of satisfaction and pride, then closed the play-box again.
He took off his coat and went downstairs. Helen, meeting him in the hall, cried:
“Oh, Jeremy, father wants to see you.”
“Where?”