Karl nodded, and the two men broke into a roar of laughter, which effectually settled the question of Louis and the Christmas Tree; for Karl was too pleased with his victory to be unrelenting.
“Now there is a man,” said the doctor to himself as he drove home, “who believes with all his heart that the sun shines. He proved it, too. If I could meet a man who believed like that in the Bible! But there is nothing corresponding to that sunstroke test of his in theology; and Christians know it. I—yes, really—I almost wish there were. Pooh! what a fool I am! Get up!” Which energetic reminder, addressed to his horse, so quickened that quadruped’s movements as to land the doctor speedily at his own door.
CHAPTER XI.
YGDRASIL.
It was easy for little Louis to accept the story of the Christ-child as a fairy tale; his life was so full of marvels this Christmas-tide. It was a drop of bitterness, of course, that George had not been asked to accompany him to Freddy’s Tree; but, to say the truth, George was not a particularly refined or attractive-looking child. He was large for his age, and heavily built; slow of speech and movement, with whitish hair, pale blue eyes, and features inchoate, of a modelling seemingly unfinished. There were not wanting signs and tokens that George might develop into a fine man; but at the moment he was unattractive, and Alice had not reached the point of choosing her guests on the broad ground of a common humanity. Indeed she was not prevented, either by common humanity or the further consideration of kinship, from reflecting with a secret glee, which she was careful not to reveal to her husband, that the presence of Louis, the shoemaker’s son, would only be condoned by the remainder of her guests because he was still—only a baby.
For Alice had bidden, not only the Garyulies and the Joblillies, but also the Grand Panjandrum himself with the little round button at top.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Henry Randolph, “you have a right to ask whom you please to your own house, and the child is only a baby, too young to presume, at present,” with awful emphasis; “but I am sorry to see you infected by the levelling tendencies of the age. Do you not know that even in heaven there are distinctions of rank?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Alice.
“Why, I’m sure we read of Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, and Powers.”
“And I suppose the Thrones decline to call on the Dominions, and the Principalities speak of the Powers as ‘that sort of people,’” said Alice. “Jennie, if I believed as you do, I’d—well, I’d rather be a heathen.”
“I hope you never may be a heathen, my dear”—