"Perhaps it's coming," Hannah suggested, hopefully.
"One—two—three—," the clock struck.
"Come, mamma!" the children cried; and so they opened the sitting-room door with trembling hands.
Nobody there; nothing there. Mamma sat down in a corner and began knitting, while the children looked out of the window into the narrow street to see a wagon drive up to the house.
"Perhaps they've forgotten all about it," Liseke was saying tremulously, when the sitting-room door burst open and there stood Max and behind him, papa Karl.
"Oh, Max, Max, where's the surprise?" the children implored.
"Why, don't you see!" Max cried, mightily injured, and turning himself about disclosed his small person arrayed in a new velveteen suit brilliant with brass buttons.
"Oh—dear—dear," sobbed little Hannah with the tears rolling down, "we thought it was a piano!'
"Did I say it was a piano?" Max howled.
"You said it—it—was—was—covered with pl—plush," Liseke sobbed.