_Residence--temporary or otherwise ----._ _Baptism ---- date of ----._ _Vaccinated ----._ All these facts Hansi's mother supplied at once. They are so constantly demanded in Germany that she had them always ready at hand, tied up in seven different packets for each child. _Married or single?_ Here Hansi giggled, and he entered solemnly the word "_spinster_." "Is that something _horrid_?" asked Hansi anxiously. "No, it only means unmarried," said Paul laughing. "_What_ a fool he is!" _Occupation?_ "Please sir, I go to school and learn my lessons, but I play a good deal too." "We will write 'spinster,'" he said, frowning fiercely. "Now listen to me, child, if you do not wish to go to prison." The whole family shuddered with horror. "Take all those silver things off the tree. They are 'found treasure,' and belong to the State. You ought to have declared them at once, and saved me all this trouble," he said. Hansi began to cry. Mrs Herzchen was very angry, "Why don't you mind your own business?" she said. "These things are our property. You will come and demand the clothes off our backs next." "Be thankful that I do not accuse you of _stealing_ these valuables," answered the fellow in a terrible voice. "But are you sure they are not chocolate after all?" he said. "They look remarkably like it, covered with silver paper, you know." He examined them carefully and ejaculating, "Well, I never," tossed them all into a leather wallet that he had brought with him. Mrs Herzchen poured forth such a storm of abuse, that he threatened her with an action for libel; but she literally turned him out of doors. Her parting words were: "Get out! Go along and make a fool of yourself if you like." Some days afterwards, the man took his treasures to the office and gave them up with a self-important flourish, only to be laughed at for his pains. The cones were just common, ordinary fir cones, and the silver fish had turned into little dead trout, smelling very unpleasant. He chucked them all away in the street, and this was an episode in his dignified career that he did not like to be reminded of. * * * * * Although Hansi's mother still always preferred useful things to artistic and ornamental ones, still she realised that the useful and ornamental may often be combined, and as she dearly loved her children, and saved up money merely on their account, she determined that they should have a merry Christmas every year, without any special help from the kind little Heinzelmen. And did Hansi give the cake to her dwarf friends as she had promised to do? Why, of course, she did. The children went all together to the forest on New Year's Eve, and found the actual spot where the tree had stood. They placed a large piece of cake on the old stump. But they did not see the Heinzelmen or even the squirrel, although they repeated seven times seven is forty-nine in the hope of attracting them.