this time, it could hardly be anything but
a great castle, a fortress, where all sorts of pretty soldiers would be
drilling and marching about; and then, that other soldiers would come
and try to get into the fortress, upon which the soldiers inside would
fire away at them, as pluckily as you please, with cannon, till every
thing banged and thundered like anything.

"'No, no,' Marie said. 'Godpapa Drosselmeier once told me about a
beautiful garden, with a great lake in it, and beautiful swans swimming
about with great gold collars, singing lovely music. And then a lovely
little girl comes down through the garden to the lake, and calls the
swans and feeds them with shortbread and cake.'

"'Swans don't eat cake and shortbread,' Fritz cried, rather rudely
(with masculine superiority); 'and Godpapa Drosselmeier couldn't make a
whole garden. After all, we have got very few of his playthings;
whatever he brings is always taken away from us. So I like the things
papa and mamma give us much better; we keep them, all right, ourselves,
and can do what we like with them.'

"The children went on discussing as to what he might have in store for
them this time. Marie called Fritz's attention to the fact that Miss
Gertrude (her biggest doll) appeared to be failing a good deal as time
went on, inasmuch as she was more clumsy and awkward than ever,
tumbling on to the floor every two or three minutes, a thing which did
not occur without leaving very ugly marks on her face, and of course a
proper condition of her clothes became out of the question altogether.
Scolding was of no use. Mamma too had laughed at her for being so
delighted with Miss Gertrude's little new parasol. Fritz, again,
remarked that a good fox was lacking to his small zoological
collection, and that his army was quite without cavalry, as his papa
was well aware. But the children knew that their elders had got all
sorts of charming things ready for them, as also that the Child-Christ,
at Christmas time, took special care for their wants. Marie sat in
thoughtful silence, but Fritz murmured quietly to himself:

"'All the same, I should like a fox and some hussars!'

"It was now quite dark; Fritz and Marie sitting close together, did not
dare to utter another syllable; they felt as if there were a fluttering
of gentle, invisible wings around them, whilst a very far away, but
unutterably beautiful strain of music could dimly be heard. Then a
bright gleam of light passe