s and videttes) were
bivouacking for the night. Marie got Nutcracker's lost teeth together,
bound a pretty white ribbon, taken from her dress, about his poor chin,
and then wrapped the poor little fellow, who was looking very pale and
frightened, more tenderly and carefully than before in her
handkerchief. Thus she held him, rocking him like a child in her arms,
as she looked at the picture-books. She grew quite angry (which was not
usual with her) with Godpapa Drosselmeier because he laughed so, and
kept asking how she could make such a fuss about an ugly little fellow
like that. That odd and peculiar likeness to Drosselmeier, which had
struck her when she saw Nutcracker at first, occurred to her mind again
now, and she said, with much earnestness:

"'Who knows, godpapa, if you were to be dressed the same as my darling
Nutcracker, and had on the same shining boots--who knows whether you
mightn't look almost as handsome as he does?'

"Marie did not understand why papa and mamma laughed so heartily, nor
why Godpapa Drosselmeier's nose got so red, nor why he did not join so
much in the laughter as before. Probably there was some special reason
for these things.

"WONDERFUL EVENTS.

"We must now explain that, in the sitting-room, on the left-hand as you
go in, there stands, against the wall, a high, glass-fronted cupboard,
where all the children's Christmas presents are yearly put away to be
kept. Louise, the elder sister, was still quite little when her father
had this cupboard constructed by a very skilful workman, who had put in
it such transparent panes of glass, and altogether made the whole
affair so splendid, that the things, when inside it, looked almost more
shining and lovely than when one had them actually in one's hands. In
the upper shelves, which were beyond the reach of Fritz and Marie, were
stowed Godpapa Drosselmeier's works of art; immediately under them was
the shelf for the picture-books. Fritz and Marie were allowed to do
what they liked with the two lower shelves, but it always came about
that the lower one of all was that in which Marie put away her dolls,
as their place of residence, whilst Fritz utilized the shelf above this
as cantonments for his troops of all arms. So that, on the evening as
to which we are speaking, Fritz had quartered his hussars in his--the
upper--shelf of these two, whilst Marie had put Miss Gertrude rather in
a corner, established her new dol