He smiled seraphically upon his rude, convulsed audience, which was strewn around helplessly on chairs and sofa.
Then he prepared to manipulate the second candle. With a thud that shook the whole house, he cleared it triumphantly.
"January, February! Ach, it is so easy!"
"You're a fairy, Herr Schmidt!" declared Denis. "I believe you've got gossamer wings hidden in your toes!"
"You're a bit muddled, O.B., aren't you?" observed Ted.
But the hackneyed and stale old saying that pride goes before a fall held good now. Herr Schmidt, overconfident, leapt buoyantly at his third candle and came down with a horrible squelch straight on it.
"Ach, I've put—him out!" he ejaculated dismally.
"No, have you?" said Ted.
"Yes, I haf," he responded in all good faith, eying the flattened mass of wax. "It is March; I shall be unlucky."
Then warily he started once more. He surmounted successfully April, May, June, and July. By that time his beaming smiles had given place to a deep and solemn earnestness infinitely more ludicrous. His face was very red, and his breath was very short. But on he went; came to grief over August; on again, over September, October, successfully, put November out, and leapt December with a bang that Denis declared made his teeth rattle in his head.