Melchiors Dream and Other Tales | Page 3

of it.
But as this is a strictly candid history, I will at once confess the truth,
on behalf of my hero and his brothers and sisters. They had spent the
morning in decorating the old church, in pricking holly about the house,
and in making a mistletoe bush. Then in the afternoon they had tasted
the Christmas soup and seen it given out; they had put a finishing touch
to the snow man by crowning him with holly, and had dragged the
yule-logs home from the carpenter's. And now, the early tea being over,
Paterfamilias had gone to finish his sermon for to-morrow; his friend
was shut up in his room; and Materfamilias was in hers, with one of
those painful headaches which even Christmas will not always keep
away. So the ten children were left to amuse themselves, and they
found it rather a difficult matter.
"Here's a nice Christmas!" said our hero. He had turned his youngest
brother out of the arm-chair, and was now lying in it with his legs over
the side. "Here's a nice Christmas! A fellow might just as well be at
school. I wonder what Adolphus Brown would think of being cooped
up with a lot of children like this! It's his party to-night, and he's to
have champagne and ices. I wish I were an only son."
"Thank you," said a chorus of voices from the floor. They were all
sprawling about on the hearth-rug, pushing and struggling like so many

kittens in a sack, and every now and then with a grumbled
remonstrance:--
"Don't, Jack! you're treading on me."
"You needn't take all the fire, Tom."
"Keep your legs to yourself, Benjamin."
"It wasn't I," etc., with occasionally the feebler cry of a small sister--
"Oh! you boys are so rough."
"And what are you girls, I wonder?" inquired the proprietor of the
arm-chair with cutting irony. "Whiney piney, whiney piney. I wish
there were no such things as brothers and sisters!"
"You wish WHAT?" said a voice from the shadow by the door, as deep
and impressive as that of the ghost in Hamlet.
The ten sprang up; but when the figure came into the fire-light, they
saw that it was no ghost, but Paterfamilias's old college friend, who
spent most of his time abroad, and who, having no home or relatives of
his own, had come to spend Christmas at his friend's vicarage. "You
wish _what_?" he repeated.
"Well, brothers and sisters are a bore," was the reply. "One or two
would be all very well; but just look, here are ten of us; and it just
spoils everything. If a fellow wants to go anywhere, it's somebody
else's turn. If old Brown sends a basket of grapes, it's share and share
alike; all the ten must taste, and then there's about a grape and a half for
each. If anybody calls or comes to luncheon, there are a whole lot of
brats swarming about, looking as if we kept a school. Whatever one
does, the rest must do; whatever there is, the rest must share; whereas,
if a fellow was an only son, he would have the whole--and by all the
rules of arithmetic, one is better than a tenth."
"And by the same rules ten is better than one," said the friend.

"Sold again," sang out Master Jack from the floor, and went head over
heels against the fender.
His brother boxed his ears with great promptitude, and went on, "Well,
I don't care; confess, sir, isn't it rather a nuisance?"
Paterfamilias's friend looked very grave, and said, quietly, "I don't think
I am able to judge. I never had brother or sister but one, and he was
drowned at sea. Whatever I have had, I have had the whole of, and
would have given it away willingly for some one to give it to. If any
one sent me grapes, I ate them alone. If I made anything, there was no
one to show it to. If I wanted to act, I must act all the characters, and be
my own audience. I remember that I got a lot of sticks at last, and cut
heads and faces to all of them, and carved names on their sides, and
called them my brothers and sisters. If you want to know what I
thought a nice number for a fellow to have, I can only say that I
remember carving twenty-five. I used to stick them in the ground and
talk to them. I have been only, and lonely, and alone, all my life, and
have never felt the nuisance you speak of."
This was a funny account; but the speaker looked so far from funny that
one of the sisters, who was very tender-hearted, crept up to