The speaker was a boy—­if I may be allowed to use the word in speaking of an individual whose jackets had for some time past been resigned to a younger member of his family, and who daily, in the privacy of his own apartment, examined his soft cheeks by the aid of his sisters’ “back-hair glass.”  He was a handsome boy too; tall, and like David—­“ruddy, and of a fair countenance;” and his face, though clouded then, bore the expression of general amiability.  He was the eldest son in a large young family, and was being educated at one of the best public schools.  He did not, it must be confessed, think either small beer or small beans of himself; and as to the beer and beans that his family thought of him, I think it was pale ale and kidney-beans at least.

Young Hopeful had, however, his weak points like the rest of us; and perhaps one of the weakest was the difficulty he found in amusing himself without bothering other people.  He had quite a monomania for proposing the most troublesome “larks” at the most inconvenient moments; and if his plans were thwarted, an AEolian harp is cheerful compared to the tone in which, arguing and lamenting, he

“Fought his battles o’er again,”

to the distraction of every occupied member of the household.

When the lords of the creation of all ages can find nothing else to do, they generally take to eating and drinking; and so it came to pass that our hero had set his mind upon brewing a jorum of punch, and sipping it with an accompaniment of mince-pies; and Paterfamilias had not been quietly settled to his writing for half-an-hour, when he was disturbed by an application for the necessary ingredients.  These he had refused, quietly explaining that he could not afford to waste his French brandy, etc., in school-boy cookery, and ending with, “You see the reason, my dear boy?”

To which the dear boy replied as above, and concluded with the disrespectful (not to say ungrateful) hint, “Old Brown never blows up about that sort of thing; he likes Adolphus to enjoy himself in the holidays.”

Whereupon Paterfamilias made answer, in the mildly deprecating tone in which the elder sometimes do answer the younger in these topsy-turvy days:—­

“That’s quite a different case.  Don’t you see, my boy, that Adolphus Brown is an only son, and you have nine brothers and sisters?  If you have punch and mince-meat to play with, there is no reason why Tom should not have it, and James, and Edward, and William, and Benjamin, and Jack.  And then there are your sisters.  Twice the amount of the Browns’ mince-meat would not serve you.  I like you to enjoy yourself in the holidays as much as young Brown or anybody; but you must remember that I send you boys to good schools, and give you all the substantial comforts and advantages in my power; and the Christmas bills are very heavy, and I have a great many calls on my purse; and you must be reasonable.  Don’t you see?”