Gerda had finished her hair for the night and was brushing her big white teeth, using the ivory-backed hand-mirror to see them better. “I shall _probably_ not marry at all,” she said, speaking with some difficulty on account of the tooth-powder. “I don’t see why I should. I am not anxious. I’ll go back to Amsterdam and play duets with Daddy and afterwards live with my married sister.” “What a pity,” Tony said briskly. “What a pity! You ought to marry here and stay here for always. Listen: you could marry one of my brothers--” “The one with the big nose?” asked Gerda, and gave a dainty little yawn, holding the hand-mirror before her face. “Or the other; it doesn’t matter. You could furnish beautifully. Jacobs could do it--the upholsterer in Fish Street. He has lovely taste. I’d come to see you every day--” But then there came the voice of Mlle. Popinet. It said: “Oh, mademoiselles! Please go to bed. It is too late to get married any more this evening!” Sundays and holidays Tony spent in Meng Street or outside the town with her grandparents. How lovely, when it was fine on Easter Sunday, hunting for eggs and marzipan hares in the enormous Kröger garden! Then there were the summer holidays at the seashore; they lived in the Kurhouse, ate at the table-d’hôte, bathed, and went donkey-riding. Some seasons when the Consul had business, there were long journeys. But Christmases were best of all. There were three present-givings: at home, at the grandparents’, and at Sesemi’s, where bishop flowed in streams. The one at home was the grandest, for the Consul believed in keeping the holy feast with pomp and ceremony. They gathered in the landscape-room with due solemnity. The servants and the crowd of poor people thronged into the pillared hall, where the Consul went about shaking their purple hands. Then outside rose the voices of the choir-boys from St. Mary’s in a quartette, and one’s heart beat loudly with awe and expectation. The smell of the Christmas tree was already coming through the crack in the great white folding doors; and the Frau Consul took the old family Bible with the funny big letters, and slowly read aloud the Christmas chapter; and after the choir-boys had sung another carol, everybody joined in “O Tannenbaum” and went in solemn procession through the hall into the great salon, hung with tapestries that had statuary woven into them. There the tree rose to the ceiling, decorated with white lilies, twinkling and sparkling and pouring out light and fragrance; and the table with the presents on it stretched from the windows to the door. Outside, the Italians with the barrel-organ were making music in the frozen, snowy streets, and a great hubbub came over from the Christmas market in Market Square. All the children except little Clara stopped up to late supper in the salon, and there were mountains of carp and stuffed turkey.