Around the gleaming tree stood a ring of aunts, uncles and grandparents, flushed and happy.
“Merry Christmas, Bobbert! Merry Christmas, Babe! How do you like it? Isn’t it grand? See the angel? See the pop-corn? Don’t look at the floor yet! (No, it isn’t time so soon. Chris will start it.) Well, was it lovely, bless her little heart? Wunderschön, Liebchen, nicht wahr?”
Bobbert smiled perfunctorily at the tree, blinked a little, leaped through the ring of bright-frocked relatives, and fell upon a red-faced, apologetic man standing with the group of delighted servants near the door.
“Hello David!” he cried. “When did you come back? Are you going to stay? Did you know I could swim? Will you tell me a story to-night?”
David, whose only fault was too great an attachment to the cup that cheered him too frequently, and who had been devoted to Bobbert, coughed deprecatingly and explained: “Only dropped in for the tree, Mr. Bob, your papa havin’ asked me in with the rest. And a fine tree it is, I’m sure. I expect most o’ them presents will be for you, Mr. Bob?”
David prefixed the title of respect in public, but his private relations with Bobbert had been anything but formal.
Aunt Kate, dancing with impatience, had begun to detach the presents from the lower boughs, and soon they were piling up around him.
“Master Robertson Wheeler. Master Robertson Wheeler—oh, Bobbert, that’s a whopping fine present. Miss Dorothea Wheeler. Siehst du, mein süsses Kind? Master Robertson Wheeler. See what Uncle Ritch. sent you, Bob! He forgot how you had grown!”
They were laughing, explaining, thanking, eating, all at once.
“And the candy, mother’ll keep till to-morrow. Now, Bob, see! Under the tree!”