"Pardon! but I don't wish to be seen at present;" and we both bore our burdens into the parlor, and laid them on the table. "Now, Carlomein, the moment dinner is over, we two shall come back and lock ourselves in here." "I should like it of all things, sir, selfish wretch that I am! but I don't think they will." "Oh, yes, I will make them!" When at last we descended ready, Carlotta, in her white beaver bonnet, my own present, looked as soft as any snowdrop,--too soft almost to be kissed. She held out her arms to Seraphael so very pertinaciously that he was obliged to carry her; nor would he give her up until we reached my mother's door. It was quite the same at dinner also; she would sit next him, would stick her tiny fork into his face, with a morsel of turkey at the end of it, would poke crumbs into his mouth with her finger, would put up her lips to kiss him, would say, every moment, "I like you much-much!" with all Davy's earnestness, though with just so much of her mother's modesty as made her turn pink and shy, and put herself completely over her chair into Seraphael's lap, when he laughed at her. He was in ecstasies, and every now and then a shade so tender stole upon his air that I knew he could only be adverting to the tenderest of all human probabilities,--the dream of his next year's offspring. After dinner, Miss was to retire. She was carried upstairs by Margareth, of whom I can only say she loved Carlotta better than she had loved Carl. Seraphael then arose, and gracefully, gleefully, despite the solicitations on all hands exhibited, declared he must also go, that he had to meet the Lord Chancellor, and could not keep him waiting. There was no more prayer wasted after this announcement, everybody laughed too much. Taking a handful of nuts from a dish, and throwing a glance of inexpressible elfishness at my mother, he said, "Carl and the Lord Chancellor and I are going to crack them in a corner. Come, Carlomein! we must not keep so grand a person waiting." I know not what blank he left behind him, but I know what a world he carried with him. We had such an afternoon! But we had to be really very busy; I never worked so hard in a small way. When all was finished, the guilt fruit hung, the necklaces festooned, the glitter ordered with that miraculous rapidity in which he surpassed all others, and that fairy craft of his by which he was enabled to re-create all Arabian, mystical, he placed the cradle in the shade. "You see, Carlomein, I could not have a Christ-child up there at the top, because your brother is rather particular, and might not choose to approve. It will never occur to him about the manger, if we don't tell him; but you perceive all the same that it is here, being made of straw, and very orthodox." "It appears to me, sir, that you have learned English customs to some purpose, as well as German." He replied by dancing round the tree, and twisting in the tapers red and green.