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Christmas Crackers, A Fantasia
by
“He is strange,” said the young lady (she spoke of the tutor in answer to the above remark); “but I am very fond of him. He has been with us so long he is like one of the family; though we know as little of his history as we did on the day he came.”
“He looks clever,” said the visitor. (Perhaps that is the least one can say for a fellow-creature who shows a great deal of bare skull, and is not otherwise good-looking.)
“He is clever,” she answered, “wonderfully clever; so clever and so odd that sometimes I fancy he is hardly ‘canny.’ There is something almost supernatural about his acuteness and his ingenuity, but they are so kindly used; I wonder he has not brought out any playthings for us to-night.”
“Playthings?” inquired the young man.
“Yes; on birthdays or festivals like this he generally brings something out of those huge pockets of his. He has been all over the world, and he produces Indian puzzles, Japanese flower-buds that bloom in hot water, and German toys with complicated machinery, which I suspect him of manufacturing himself. I call him Godpapa Grosselmayer, after that delightful old fellow in Hoffman’s tale of the Nut Cracker.”
“What’s that about crackers?” inquired the tutor, sharply, his eyes changing colour like a fire opal.
“I am talking of Nussnacker und Mausekoenig,” laughed the young lady. “Crackers do not belong to Christmas; fireworks come on the 5th of November.”
“Tut, tut!” said the tutor; “I always tell your ladyship that you are still a tom-boy at heart, as when I first came, and you climbed trees and pelted myself and my young students with horse-chestnuts. You think of crackers to explode at the heels of timorous old gentlemen in a November fog; but I mean bonbon crackers, coloured crackers, dainty crackers–crackers for young people with mottoes of sentiment” (here the tutor shrugged his high shoulders an inch or two higher, and turned the palms of his hands outwards with a glance indescribably comical)–“crackers with paper prodigies, crackers with sweetmeats–such sweetmeats!” He smacked his lips with a grotesque contortion, and looked at Master McGreedy, who choked himself with his last raisin, and forthwith burst into tears.
The widow tried in vain to soothe him with caresses, but he only stamped and howled the more. But Miss Letitia gave him some smart smacks on the shoulders to cure his choking fit, and as she kept up the treatment with vigour, the young gentleman was obliged to stop and assure her that the raisin had “gone the right way” at last. “If he were my child,” Miss Letitia had been known to observe, with that confidence which characterizes the theories of those who are not parents, “I would, etc., etc., etc.” in fact, Miss Letitia thought she would have made a very different boy of him–as, indeed, I believe she would.
“Are crackers all that you have for us, sir?” asked one of the two school-boys, as they hung over the tutor’s chair. They were twins, grand boys, with broad, good-humoured faces, and curly wigs, as like as two puppy dogs of the same breed. They were only known apart by their intimate friends, and were always together, romping, laughing, snarling, squabbling, huffing and helping each other against the world. Each of them owned a wiry terrier, and in their relations to each other the two dogs (who were marvellously alike) closely followed the example of their masters.
“Do you not care for crackers, Jim?” asked the tutor.
“Not much, sir. They do for girls: but, as you know, I care for nothing but military matters. Do you remember that beautiful toy of yours–‘The Besieged City’? Ah! I liked that. Look out, Tom! you’re shoving my arm. Can’t you stand straight, man?’
“R-r-r-r–r-r, snap!”
Tom’s dog was resenting contact with Jim’s dog on the hearthrug. There was a hustle among the four, and then they subsided.
“The Besieged City was all very well for you, Jim,” said Tom, who meant to be a sailor; “but please to remember that it admitted of no attack from the sea; and what was there for me to do? Ah, sir! you are so clever, I often think you could help me to make a swing with ladders instead of single ropes, so that I could run up and down the rigging whilst it was in full go.”