It was here that Raymond's grandparents gave their annual Christmas party for their grandson and his friends. This was a festival famous in the young life of that neighborhood. Its celebrity was chiefly due to the Gargantuan amount of delightful food available. There was a tree, of course, but the presents were of the edible, rather than the permanent kind, and no less appreciated on that account. Nowhere else was there to be found such an amount and variety of candy, fruit, ice cream, cake, nuts, raisins, chicken salad, sandwiches, jellies, jams, _pâté de foies gras_, and other pleasing forms of nourishment--to say nothing of lemonade and various kinds of "shrub"--as at Raymond's Christmas party. At the close of each of these events it did not seem that we could ever eat again, yet there was a certain assurance of the continuance of the fête in carrying home a paper bag containing an orange, an apple and a generous selection of sweets. After the assembly had been fed there were games--"Drop the Handkerchief," "Still Pond, No More Moving," that perennial juvenile pastime where the participants chant the memorable chorus beginning "Oats, peas, beans and barley grow," and sometimes, much against the sentiments of the boys, that embarrassing game where the player who became "It" was compelled to "Bow to the wittiest, kneel to the prettiest and kiss the one you love best." The boys decided early in their social experience that no self-respecting male ought to play this game and it soon fell into disrepute, though the girls fought for its continuance for a time. Youthful spirits rise with food as rapidly as does a thermometer under the sun's rays and a good deal of noise and romping invariably accompanied these games. Raymond's dear old grandfather and grandmother enjoyed all these manifestations of young life as keenly, so far as we could see, as did the children themselves, but Uncle Horace, it was evident, did not like noise and confusion. Memory pictures him standing in the background of the party, as in the background of life, a quiet spectator, blinking shortsightedly but not unkindly, through his big spectacles, and vanishing altogether as the excitement increased. Once one of the youthful guests, while the festivities were at their height, wandered into a remote part of the house in search of some accessory required for an approaching game and entered by a rear door a room where Uncle Horace had been reading. He had put his book down in his easy chair and was now discovered standing in the other doorway, his back to the room.