At Thanksgiving dinners, at Christmas parties, at New Year and Twelfth Night festivals, no guest so gay and useful, so inventive and delightful, as Arthur Merlin the painter.  Just as Aunt Winnifred has abandoned her theory it has become true, and all the girls do seem to love the man who respects them as much as the younger men do with whom they nightly dance in winter.  He romps with the children, has a perfectly regulated and triumphant sliding-scale of gifts and attentions; and only this Christmas, although he is now—­well, Aunt Winnifred has locked up the Family Bible and begins to talk of Arthur as a young man—­yet only this Christmas, at Lawrence Newt’s family party, at which, so nimbly did they run round, it was almost impossible to compute the actual number of Newt, and Wynne, and Bennet children—­Arthur Merlin brought in, during the evening, with an air of profound secrecy, something covered with a large handkerchief.  Of course there could be no peace, and no blindman’s-buff, no stage-coach, no twirling the platter, and no snap-dragon, until the mystery was revealed; The whole crowd of short frocks and trowsers, and bright ribbons, and eyes, and curls, swarmed around the painter until he displayed a green branch.

A pair of tiny feet, carrying a pair of great blue eyes and a head of golden curls, scampered across the floor to Lawrence Newt.

“Oh, papa, what is that green thing with little berries on it?”

“That’s a misletoe bough, little Hope.”

“But, papa, what’s it for?”

The painter was already telling the children what it was for; and when he had hung it up over the folding-doors such a bubbling chorus of laughter and merry shrieks followed, there was such a dragging of little girls in white muslin by little boys in blue velvet, and such smacking, and kissing, and happy confusion, that the little Hope’s curiosity was immediately relieved.  Of all the ingenious inventions of their friend the painter, this of the misletoe was certainly the most transcendent.

But when Arthur Merlin himself joined the romp, and, chasing Hope Wayne through the lovely crowd of shouting girls and boys, finally caught her and led her to the middle of the room and dropped on one knee and kissed her hand under the misletoe, then the delight burst all bounds; and as Hope Wayne’s bright, beautiful face glanced merrily around the room—­bright and beautiful, although she is young no longer—­she saw that the elders were shouting with the children, and that Lawrence Newt and his wife, and his niece Fanny, and papa and mamma Wynne, and Bennet, were all clapping their hands and laughing.

She laughed too; and Arthur Merlin laughed; and when Ellen Bennet’s oldest daughter (of whom there are certain sly reports, in which her name is coupled with that of her cousin Edward, May Newt’s oldest son) sat down to the piano and played a Virginia reel, it was Arthur Merlin who handed out Hope Wayne with mock gravity, and stepped about and bowed around so solemnly, that little Hope Newt, sitting upon her papa’s knee and nestling her golden curls among his gray hair, laughed all the time, and wished that Christmas came every day in the year, and that she might always see Mr. Arthur Merlin dancing with dear Aunt Hope.