“I’m telling her all about Christmas, Uncle Frank.” Bobbert removed the corner of the rug from the baby’s mouth and handed her her silk rag doll. “Minna said to amuse her, and I was. About the manger I was telling——” “So I heard. But why do you cast it in that form precisely? You see, you weren’t born in one, and—and—er—you really oughtn’t to talk that way, don’t you know.” “Why wasn’t I?” “Because you weren’t.” “Well, where was I, then?” “You were born in this house.” “Where in this house?” “Where? Why, upstairs, I suppose.” “Are people always born upstairs?” “Usually.” “Never born down-stairs at all? Didn’t you ever know anybody that was born down—” “Oh, stop, Bobbert! Go on amusing your sister. You have a genius for pure idiocy. Where’s your mother?” Bobbert’s face fell. The baby tore off a bit of her doll and swallowed it unrebuked—it was one of her swallowing days—and began wetting her finger and following in a smudgy outline the figures on the Kate Greenaway wall-paper, without one reprimand from her brother. “’F I’m goin’ to have a tree, I want to make it myself. They’re all down in the lib’r’y, and I have to keep out. They’ve got a ladder in there, too. And they laugh all the time. I have to stay here with _her_! What’s the good o’ calling it my tree if I can’t help? Aunt Helena says won’t my eyes pop out when I see; but they won’t.” (“Hadn’t she better keep the doll to play with and eat something else?”) “I think I might go in! Here, stop eating that, Baby! Let go! Somebody fell off the ladder, too, and there I was out in the hall! I don’t believe they had the little back thing up that keeps it from doubling up, sort of, that way it does, you know. Do you? I could ’a’ told them about that. What’s the good of a tree, anyway?” (“Do you think she improves the wall-paper with that border? Perhaps the color comes off.”) “Here, stop that! Don’t suck your hand, Baby. Oh, goodness! I wish Minna was here. I’m not a nurse. I never made such a fuss when I was little, I know. If I had a tree for anybody, I’d let them have the fun of it. Wouldn’t you?” His audience looked uncertain. In his heart he felt that his nephew was right, but prudence restrained him, and he rose to go with a temporizing air. “Well, you know, it’s usually done this way,” he suggested. “It’s supposed to be in the nature of a surprise. If you arranged the whole thing, there wouldn’t be anybody to surprise, would there?” Bobbert sniffed. “Oh, if you stay out, we could s’prise you, I s’pose,” he said, somewhat cynically. “But I’ve seen so many trees——” The defence was very feeble, and he knew it. [Illustration: “’_Here, stop that._’”] “Oh, all right,” said Bobbert testily, jerking the baby away from the high fender. “And they’re popping corn over the fire in there; I heard it pop. And Aunt Helena said that it was so good sugared, and that fat one—the one with the yellow mustache—said that he should think all that she ate would taste——”