She left Jeremy puzzled and confused. Was it true that he was sulky? He did love his father and mother, but deeply distrusted scenes of sentiment. Nevertheless, Christmas was approaching, and he felt warm towards all the world—even Aunt Amy. Often and often he went up to his bedroom, closed the door behind him, looked under his bed to make quite sure that no one was in the room, then very cautiously opened the lid of his play-box and peered inside. At the bottom of the box were a number of odd-shaped parcels; he picked them up one after another and stroked their paper, then laid them carefully in their places. He sighed as of a man who has accomplished a great and serious task. Many times a day he did this. He had himself unpacked his play-box on his return from school. No one in the house save only he had beheld those strange parcels. II Christmas approached nearer and nearer—now it was only four days before Christmas Eve. There was no snow, but frost and a cold, pale blue sky; the town was like a crystallized fruit, hard and glittering and sharply coloured. The market was open during the whole of Christmas week, and there was the old woman under her umbrella and the fur-coated man with the wooden toys, and the fruit stalls with the holly and mistletoe, and the Punch and Judy under the town clock, where it had been for ever so many years, and the man with the coloured balloons, and the little dogs on wheels that you wound up in the back with a key and they jumped along the cobbles as natural as life. The children were deeply absorbed over their presents. Mary looked at Jeremy so often from behind her spectacles in a mysterious and ominous way that at last he said: “All right, Mary, you’ll know me next time.” “I was wondering,” she said, with a convulsive choke in her throat, “whether you’ll like my present.” “I expect I will,” he said, busy at the moment with the brushing of Hamlet. “Because,” she went on, “there were two things, and I couldn’t make up my mind which, and I asked Helen, and she said the first one, because you might have a cold any time and it would be good in the snow; but we don’t have snow here much, so I thought the other would be better, because you do like pictures, don’t you, Jeremy, and sometimes the pictures are lovely—so I got that, and now I don’t know whether you’ll like it.” Jeremy had no reply to make to this. “Oh, now you’ve guessed what it is.” “No, I haven’t,” said Jeremy quite truthfully. “Oh, I’m so glad,” Mary sighed with relief. “Have you got all your presents?” “Yes, all of them,” said Jeremy, drawing himself up and gazing with dreamy pride over Hamlet’s head. “Shall I like mine?” asked Mary, her eyes glistening. “Awfully,” said Jeremy. “You’ll like it,” he said slowly, “better than anything you’ve ever been given.” “Better than the writing-case Uncle Samuel gave me?” “Much better.”