Geniality radiated from Herr Paul’s countenance, mellow as a bowl of wine.  He toasted everybody, exhorting them to pleasure.

Harz passed a cracker secretly behind Greta’s head, and Miss Naylor, moved by a mysterious impulse, pulled it with a sort of gleeful horror; it exploded, and Greta sprang off her chair.  Scruff, seeing this, appeared suddenly on the sideboard with his forelegs in a plate of soup; without moving them, he turned his head, and appeared to accuse the company of his false position.  It was the signal for shrieks of laughter.  Scruff made no attempt to free his forelegs; but sniffed the soup, and finding that nothing happened, began to lap it.

“Take him out!  Oh! take him out!” wailed Greta, “he shall be ill!”

“Allons!  Mon cher!” cried Herr Paul, “c’est magnifique, mais, vous savez, ce nest guere la guerre!” Scruff, with a wild spring, leaped past him to the ground.

“Ah!” cried Miss Naylor, “the carpet!” Fresh moans of mirth shook the table; for having tasted the wine of laughter, all wanted as much more as they could get.  When Scruff and his traces were effaced, Herr Paul took a ladle in his hand.

“I have a toast,” he said, waving it for silence; “a toast we will drink all together from our hearts; the toast of my little daughter, who to-day has thirteen years become; and there is also in our hearts,” he continued, putting down the ladle and suddenly becoming grave, “the thought of one who is not today with us to see this joyful occasion; to her, too, in this our happiness we turn our hearts and glasses because it is her joy that we should yet be joyful.  I drink to my little daughter; may God her shadow bless!”

All stood up, clinking their glasses, and drank:  then, in the hush that followed, Greta, according to custom, began to sing a German carol; at the end of the fourth line she stopped, abashed.

Heir Paul blew his nose loudly, and, taking up a cap that had fallen from a cracker, put it on.

Every one followed his example, Miss Naylor attaining the distinction of a pair of donkey’s ears, which she wore, after another glass of wine, with an air of sacrificing to the public good.

At the end of supper came the moment for the offering of gifts.  Herr Paul had tied a handkerchief over Greta’s eyes, and one by one they brought her presents.  Greta, under forfeit of a kiss, was bound to tell the giver by the feel of the gift.  Her swift, supple little hands explored noiselessly; and in every case she guessed right.

Dawney’s present, a kitten, made a scene by clawing at her hair.

“That is Dr. Edmund’s,” she cried at once.  Christian saw that Harz had disappeared, but suddenly he came back breathless, and took his place at the end of the rank of givers.

Advancing on tiptoe, he put his present into Greta’s hands.  It was a small bronze copy of a Donatello statue.

“Oh, Herr Harz!” cried Greta; “I saw it in the studio that day.  It stood on the table, and it is lovely.”